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Protea Hotel Kruger Gate
''Protea'' () is a genus of South African flowering plants, also called sugarbushes (Afrikaans: ''suikerbos''). Etymology The genus ''Protea'' was named in 1735 by Carl Linnaeus, possibly after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his form at will, possibly because they have such a wide variety of forms. Linnaeus's genus was formed by merging a number of genera previously published by Herman Boerhaave, although precisely which of Boerhaave's genera were included in Linnaeus's ''Protea'' varied with each of Linnaeus's publications. Taxonomy The family Proteaceae to which ''Protea'' species belong is an ancient one among angiosperms. Evidence from pollen fossils suggests Proteaceae ancestors grew in Gondwana, in the Upper Cretaceous, 75–80 million years ago. The Proteaceae are divided into two subfamilies: the Proteoideae, best represented in southern Africa, and the Grevilleoideae, concentrated in Australia and South America and the other smaller segments of Gondwana that ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protea Repens
''Protea repens'', known as the common sugarbush and in Afrikaans as the suikerbossie, is an erect shrub growing in the southern regions of South Africa. Related to other proteas, this plant is a relatively adaptable and variable species and can be found growing widely in various soils. Due to its showy flowers and adaptability, it is a popular garden subject for use in wildlife gardens in South Africa. Etymology The name of the plant family Proteaceae as well as the genus ''Protea'', both to which ''P. repens'' belongs to, derive from the name of the Greek god Proteus, a deity that was able to change between many forms. This is an appropriate image, seeing as both the family and the genus are known for their astonishing variety and diversity of flowers and leaves. The specific epithet ''repens'' means 'creeping', a case of mistaken identity, where Linnaeus used two different illustrated plates to describe the species: one was of ''P. repens'', and the other showed a dwarf creep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Kenya National Park
Mount Kenya National Park was established in 1949 to protect Mount Kenya, the wildlife and surrounding environment, which forms a habitat for wilderness, wild animals, as well as acting as an area for the catchment of water, to supply Kenya's water. History Initially, it was a forest reserve, before being announced as a national park. Currently, the national park is encircled by the forest reserve. In April 1978, the area was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Combined, the national park and forest reserve became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The Politics of Kenya, Government of Kenya had four reasons for creating a national park on and around Mount Kenya. These were the importance of tourism for the local and national Economy of Kenya, economies, to preserve an area of great scenic beauty, to conserve the biodiversity within the park, and to preserve the water-catchment for the surrounding area. Area The national park has an area of , most of which is above the cont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cut Flowers
Cut flowers are flowers or flower buds (often with some stem and leaf) that have been cut from the plant bearing it. It is usually removed from the plant for decorative use. Typical uses are in vase displays, wreaths and garlands. Many gardeners harvest their own cut flowers from domestic gardens, but there is a significant floral industry for cut flowers in most countries. The plants cropped vary by climate, culture and the level of wealth locally. Often the plants are raised specifically for the purpose, in field or glasshouse growing conditions. Cut flowers can also be harvested from the wild. The cultivation and trade of flowers is a specialization in horticulture, specifically floriculture. Cultivation Cut flower cultivation is intensive, usually on the basis of greenhouse monocultures, and requires large amounts of highly toxic pesticides, residues of which can often still be found in flower shops on imported flowers. These facts have spurred the development of movem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genetic Incompatibility
Genetic incompatibility describes the process by which mating yields offspring that are nonviable, prone to disease, or genetically defective in some way. In nature, animals can ill afford to devote costly resources for little or no reward, ergo, mating strategies have evolved to allow females to choose or otherwise determine mates which are more likely to result in viable offspring. Polyandry, for instance, when a female mates with two or more males during a period of sexual receptivity, reduces the chance that a singular mate is genetically incompatible. Exactly how females determine compatible genes prior to mating is not completely understood, but various mechanisms have been proposed, such as pheromones and male appearance and/or courtship behavior. It is also surmised that sexual selection can continue after copulation, the so called 'cryptic female choice', so named because it takes place within the body and cannot be directly observed. In this scenario, incompatible male s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leucadendron
''Leucadendron'' is a genus of about 80 species of flowering plants in the family Proteaceae, endemic to South Africa, where they are a prominent part of the fynbos ecoregion and vegetation type. Description Species in the genus ''Leucadendron'' are small trees or shrubs that are erect or creeping. Most species are shrubs that grow up to 1 m tall, some to 2 or 3 m. A few grow into moderate-sized trees up to 16 m tall. All are evergreen. The leaves are largely elliptical, sometimes needle-like, spirally arranged, simple, entire, and usually green, often covered with a waxy bloom, and in the case of the Silvertree, with a distinct silvery tone produced by dense, straight, silky hairs. This inspired the generic name ''Leucadendron'', which literally means "white tree". The flowers are produced in dense inflorescences at the branch tips; plants are dioecious, with separate male and female plants. The seed heads, or infructescences, of ''Leucadendron'' are woody cone-like structures ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leucospermum
''Leucospermum'' is a genus of evergreen upright, sometimes creeping shrubs that is assigned to the Proteaceae, with currently forty-eight known species. Almost all species are easily recognised as ''Leucospermum'' because of the long protruding styles with a thickened pollen-presenter, which jointly give the flower head the appearance of a pincushion, its common name. Pincushions can be found in South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The shrubs mostly have a single stem at their base, but some species sprout from an underground rootstock, from which the plant can regrow after fire has killed the above ground biomass. In a larger group of species, specimens are killed by fire, and their survival depends on the seeds. In all species, seeds are collected by ants, which take them to their underground nests to feed on their ant breads, a seed dispersal strategy known as myrmecochory. This ensures that the seeds do not burn, so new plants can grow from them. ''Leucospermum ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Receptacle (botany)
In botany, the receptacle refers to vegetative tissues near the end of reproductive stems that are situated below or encase the reproductive organs. Angiosperms In angiosperms, the receptacle or torus (an older term is thalamus, as in Thalamiflorae) is the thickened part of a stem (pedicel) from which the flower organs grow. In some accessory fruits, for example the pome and strawberry, the receptacle gives rise to the edible part of the fruit. The fruit of ''Rubus'' species is a cluster of drupelets on top of a conical receptacle. When a raspberry is picked, the receptacle separates from the fruit, but in blackberries, it remains attached to the fruit. — In the Daisy family (Compositae or Asteraceae), small individual flowers are arranged on a round or dome-like structure that is also called receptacle. Algae and bryophyta In phycology, receptacles occur at the ends of branches of algae mainly in the brown algae or Heterokontophyta in the Order Fucales. They are spec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pollinator
A pollinator is an animal that moves pollen from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma of a flower. This helps to bring about fertilization of the ovules in the flower by the male gametes from the pollen grains. Insects are the major pollinators of most plants, and insect pollinators include all families of bees and most families of aculeate wasps; ants; many families of flies; many lepidopterans (both butterflies and moths); and many families of beetles. Vertebrates, mainly bats and birds, but also some non-bat mammals (monkeys, lemurs, possums, rodents) and some lizards pollinate certain plants. Among the pollinating birds are hummingbirds, honeyeaters and sunbirds with long beaks; they pollinate a number of deep-throated flowers. Humans may also carry out artificial pollination. A pollinator is different from a pollenizer, a plant that is a source of pollen for the pollination process. Background Plants fall into pollination syndromes that reflect the type o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-incompatible
Self-incompatibility (SI) is a general name for several genetic mechanisms that prevent self-fertilization in sexually reproducing organisms, and thus encourage outcrossing and allogamy. It is contrasted with separation of sexes among individuals (dioecy), and their various modes of spatial (herkogamy) and temporally (dichogamy) separation. SI is best-studied and particularly common in flowering plants, although it is present in other groups, including sea squirts and fungi. In plants with SI, when a pollen grain produced in a plant reaches a stigma of the same plant or another plant with a matching allele or genotype, the process of pollen germination, pollen-tube growth, ovule fertilization, or embryo development is inhibited, and consequently no seeds are produced. SI is one of the most important means of preventing inbreeding and promoting the generation of new genotypes in plants and it is considered one of the causes of the spread and success of angiosperms on Earth. Mechan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-pollinating
Self-pollination is a form of pollination in which pollen from the same plant arrives at the stigma of a flower (in flowering plants) or at the ovule (in gymnosperms). There are two types of self-pollination: in autogamy, pollen is transferred to the stigma of the same flower; in geitonogamy, pollen is transferred from the anther of one flower to the stigma of another flower on the same flowering plant, or from microsporangium to ovule within a single (monoecious) gymnosperm. Some plants have mechanisms that ensure autogamy, such as flowers that do not open (cleistogamy), or stamens that move to come into contact with the stigma. The term selfing that is often used as a synonym, is not limited to self-pollination, but also applies to other types of self-fertilization. Occurrence Few plants self-pollinate without the aid of pollen vectors (such as wind or insects). The mechanism is seen most often in some legumes such as peanuts. In another legume, soybeans, the flowers open an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protea Cynaroides
''Protea cynaroides'', also called the king protea, is a flowering plant. It is a distinctive member of ''Protea'', having the largest head (botany), flower head in the genus. The species is also known as giant protea, honeypot or king sugar bush. It is widely distributed in the southwestern and southern parts of South Africa in the fynbos region. The king protea is the national flower of South Africa. It also is the flagship of thProtea Atlas Project run by the South African National Botanical Institute. The king protea has several colour forms and horticulturists have recognized 81 garden varieties, some of which have injudiciously been planted in its natural range. In some varieties the pink of the flower and red borders of leaves are replaced by a creamy yellow. This unusual flower has a long vase life in flower arrangements, and makes for an excellent dried flower. ''Protea cynaroides'' is adapted to survive wildfires by its thick underground stem, which contains many dorm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, based on the misbelief that the Cape was the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian oceans, and have nothing to do with north or south. In fact, by looking at a map, the southernmost point of Africa is Cape Agulhas about to the east-southeast. The currents of the two oceans meet at the point where the warm-water Agulhas current meets the cold-water Benguela current and turns back on itself. That oceanic meeting point fluctuates between Cape Agulhas and Cape Point (about east of the Cape of Good Hope). When following the western side of the African coastline from the equator, however, the Cape of Good Hope marks the point where a ship begins to travel more eastward than southward. Thus, the first mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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