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Maria Wilman
Maria Wilman (29 April 1867 – 9 November 1957) was a South African geologist and botanist. She was the first Director of the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, South Africa and the second female South African to attend the University of Cambridge in England."Maria Wilman" (2012). ''The African Rock Art Digital Archive''. Retrieved 24 September 2012. Early life Born in on 29 April 1867, Wilman was the fifth of Herbert Wilman and Engela Johanna Neethling's nine daughters.[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beaufort West
Beaufort West (Afrikaans: ''Beaufort-Wes''; Xhosa: ''eBhofolo'') is a town in the Western Cape province in South Africa. It is the largest town in the arid Great Karoo region, and is known as the "Capital of the Karoo". It forms part of the Beaufort West Local Municipality, with 34,085 inhabitants in 2011. It is the centre of an agricultural district based mainly on sheep farming, and is a significant town and logistical support hub on the N1 national road. Next door to Beaufort West is the Karoo National Park. Important Permian era fossils have been found in the area to the west of the town. Initially found by David Baird, son of the local magistrate in 1827. The old Town Hall and the Dutch Reformed Church have been declared national monuments. History Beaufort West was the first town to be established in the central Karoo. The town was founded in 1818 and initially named ''Beaufort'' after Henry Somerset, 5th Duke of Beaufort, who was the father of Lord Charles Henry Somerset ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bushmen
The San peoples (also Saan), or Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kxʼa-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures that are the first cultures of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. In 2017, Botswana was home to approximately 63,500 San people (roughly 2.8% of the population) making it the country with the highest number of San people. Definition The term "San" has a long vowel and is spelled Sān (in Khoekhoegowab orthography). It is a Khoekhoe exonym with the meaning of "foragers" and was often used in a derogatory manner to describe nomadic, foraging people. Based on observation of lifestyle, this term has been applied to speakers of three distinct language families living between the Okavango River in Botswana and Etosha National Park in northwestern Namibia, extending up into southern Angola; central peoples of most of Namibia and Botswana, extending into Zambia and Zimbab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biodiversity Heritage Library
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. BHL operates as worldwide consortiumof natural history, botanical, research, and national libraries working together to address this challenge by digitizing the natural history literature held in their collections and making it freely available for open access as part of a global “biodiversity community.” The BHL consortium works with the international taxonomic community, publishers, bioinformaticians, and information technology professionals to develotools and servicesto facilitate greater access, interoperability, and reuse of content and data. BHL provides a range of services, data exports, and APIs to allow users to download content, harvest source data files, and reuse materials for research purposes. Through taxonomic intelligence tools developed bGlobal Names Architecture BHL indexes the taxonomic names throughout the collection, allowing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Watsonia (plant)
''Watsonia'' (bugle lily) is a genus of plants in the family Iridaceae, subfamily Crocoideae. Watsonias are native to southern Africa (South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini). The genus is named after Sir William Watson, an 18th-century British botanist. Diversity There are 56 accepted species in southern Africa, with two varieties and about 112 names either unresolved or regarded as synonyms. All are perennial herbs growing from corms and producing erect spikes of showy flowers. Most are fynbos plants, adapted to a Mediterranean-type climate, but some occur along the eastern and inland areas of the country and adapted to a wider range of conditions, mainly continental climate with summer rainfall. Many species occur mainly in the mountains, though some occur in sandy flats and marshy areas. Cultivation The most commonly cultivated species is the pink-flowered '' Watsonia borbonica'' and its white mutant 'Arderne's White'. These were crossed with ''Watsonia meriana'' and other speci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by both List of U.S. states and territories by area, area (after Alaska) and List of U.S. states and territories by population, population (after California). Texas shares borders with the states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexico, Mexican States of Mexico, states of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest; and has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Houston is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas and the List of United States cities by population, fourth-largest in the U.S., while San Antonio is the second most pop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of both natural factors (severe drought) and manmade factors (a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent aeolian processes, wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region). The drought came in three waves: 1934–35 North American drought, 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains (United States), High Plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years. The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works, notably the novel ''The Grapes of Wrath'' (1939) by John Steinbeck, the folk music of Woody Guthrie, and photographs depicting the conditions of migrants by Dorothea Lange, particularly the ''Migrant Mother'', taken in 1936. Geographic characteristics and early history With insuffic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brachychiton
''Brachychiton'' (kurrajong, bottletree) is a genus of 31 species of trees and large shrubs, native to Australia (the centre of diversity, with 30 species), and New Guinea (one species). Fossils from New South Wales and New Zealand are estimated to be 50 million years old, corresponding to the Paleogene. They grow to 4 – 30m tall, and some are dry-season deciduous. Several species (though not all) are pachycaul plants with a very stout stem for their overall size, used to store water during periods of drought. The leaves show intraspecific variation and generally range from entire to deeply palmately lobed with long slender leaflet-like lobes joined only right at the base. Their sizes range from 4 – 20 cm long and wide. All species are monoecious with separate male and female flowers on the same plant. The flowers have a bell-shaped perianth consisting of a single series of fused lobes which is regarded as a calyx despite being brightly coloured in most species. The fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesquite
Mesquite is a common name for several plants in the genus ''Prosopis'', which contains over 40 species of small leguminous trees. They are native to dry areas in the Americas. They have extremely long roots to seek water from very far under ground. As a legume, mesquites are one of the few sources of fixed nitrogen in the desert habitat. These trees bloom from spring to summer. They often produce fruits known as "pods". ''Prosopis'' spp. are able to grow up to tall, depending on site and climate. They are deciduous and depending on location and rainfall have either deep or shallow roots. ''Prosopis'' is considered long-lived because of the low mortality rate after the dicotyledonous stage and juveniles are also able to survive in conditions with low light and drought. The Cahuilla indigenous people of western North America were known to eat the seeds of mesquite. History ''Prosopis'' spp. have been in North America since the Pliocene era and their wood has been dated to 3300 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constance Georgina Adams
Constance Georgina Adams (6 August 1883 – 21 June 1968), also known as Constance Georgina Tardrew, was a South African housewife and collector of botanical specimens. Known by the nicknames Connie and Daisy, Adams was born in Cape Town and spent her early childhood on a farm in Tulbagh before moving to Warrenton. She subsequently lived in Kimberley before getting married, settling in Johannesburg where she became active in the Housewives League of South Africa. Inspired by her parents' interest in botany, she became a successful collector for both the Albany Museum in Grahamstown and McGregor Museum in Kimberley. She also cultivated a friendship with the Director of the latter, Maria Wilman. She collected over 240 specimens, which were presented to the Albany Museum, McGregor Museum and the National Herbarium in Pretoria. Life Constance Georgina Adams, known in her early life as "Connie" and later "Daisy", was born in Cape Town, Cape Colony, on 6 August 1883. Her father, Joh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbarium
A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study. The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called ''exsiccatum'', plur. ''exsiccata'') but, depending upon the material, may also be stored in boxes or kept in alcohol or other preservative. The specimens in a herbarium are often used as reference material in describing plant taxa; some specimens may be types. The same term is often used in mycology to describe an equivalent collection of preserved fungi, otherwise known as a fungarium. A xylarium is a herbarium specialising in specimens of wood. The term hortorium (as in the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium) has occasionally been applied to a herbarium specialising in preserving material of horticultural origin. History The making of herbaria is an ancient phenomenon, at least six centuries old, although the techniques have changed l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khoikhoi
Khoekhoen (singular Khoekhoe) (or Khoikhoi in the former orthography; formerly also ''Hottentot (racial term), Hottentots''"Hottentot, n. and adj." ''OED Online'', Oxford University Press, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/88829. Accessed 13 May 2018. Citing G. S. Nienaber, 'The origin of the name “Hottentot” ', ''African Studies'', 22:2 (1963), 65-90, . See also . ) are the traditionally Nomad, nomadic pastoralist Indigenous peoples of Africa, indigenous population of southwestern Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San people, San (literally "Foragers") peoples. The designation "Khoekhoe" is actually a ''kare'' or praise address, not an ethnic endonym, but it has been used in the literature as an ethnic term for Khoe–Kwadi languages, Khoe-speaking peoples of Southern Africa, particularly pastoralist groups, such as the Griqua people, !Ora, !Gona, Nama people, Nama, Khoemana, Xiri and Damara people, ǂNūkhoe nations. While the presence of Kho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Petroglyphs
A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs are found worldwide, and are often associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek prefix , from meaning "stone", and meaning "carve", and was originally coined in French as . Another form of petroglyph, normally found in literate cultures, a rock relief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on "living rock" such as a cliff, rather than a detached piece of stone. While these relief carvings are a category of rock art, sometimes found in conjunction with rock-cut architecture, they tend to be omitted in most works on rock art, which concentrate on engravings and paintings by prehistoric or nonliterate cultures. Some of these reliefs exploit the rock's na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
