|
Sonchus Brassicifolius
''Sonchus brassicifolius'', Synonym (taxonomy), synonym ''Dendroseris litoralis'', is a species of flowering plant in the daisy and sunflower family Asteraceae. It is a small evergreen tree species known as the cabbage tree. It is Endemism, endemic to the Juan Fernández Islands, which lie in the southeast Pacific, off the west coast of Chile. It is native only to the tiny, volcanic Robinson Crusoe Island, home of the famed ''Juania, Juania australis'' and many other endemic plants. The species is threatened by habitat loss and has been brought back from the brink of extinction. It had been reduced to only a few individuals by feral goats on the island, and is still considered critically endangered. Description Younger trunks of ''Sonchus brassicifolius'' are ringed with pale leaf scars and distinctive rubbery, leathery leaves up to long. It grows into a small, gnarled tree with several somewhat palm-like crowns of very large, ovate leaves on whitish, green-spotted leaf stalks an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Johan Fredrik Skottsberg
Carl Johan Fredrik Skottsberg (1 December 1880 – 14 June 1963) was a Swedish botanist and explorer of Antarctica. Life Skottsberg was born in Karlshamn on 1 December 1880 the son of Carl Adolf Skottsberg a schoolmaster and his wife, Maria Louisa Pfeiffer. He was educated locally then studied Sciences at Uppsala University from 1898, specialising in Botany, and receiving his doctorate (PhD) there in 1907. From 1901 to 1903 Skottsberg served as official botanist to the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901 to 1903 on the ship ''Antarctic (ship), Antarctic''. On his return to Sweden, Skottsberg published (1905) the first comprehensive phytogeography, phytogeographic study of the flora of southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Later he led the Swedish Magellanic Expedition to Patagonia, 1907 to 1909. Carl Skottsberg is believed to have been the last to have seen the Santalum fernandezianum tree alive when he visited the Juan Fernández Islands in 1908. He was conservator at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
International Plant Names Index
The International Plant Names Index (IPNI) describes itself as "a database of the names and associated basic bibliographical details of seed plants, ferns and lycophytes." Coverage of plant names is best at the rank of species and genus. It includes basic bibliographical details associated with the names. Its goals include eliminating the need for repeated reference to primary sources for basic bibliographic information about plant names. The IPNI also maintains a list of standardized author abbreviations. These were initially based on Brummitt & Powell (1992), but new names and abbreviations are continually added. Description IPNI is the product of a collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Index Kewensis), The Harvard University Herbaria (Gray Herbarium Index), and the Australian National Herbarium ( APNI). The IPNI database is a collection of the names registered by the three cooperating institutions and they work towards standardizing the information. The stan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonchus
''Sonchus'' is a genus of flowering plants in the tribe Cichorieae within the family Asteraceae and are commonly known as sow thistles (less commonly hare thistles or hare lettuces). Sowthistles are annual, biennial or perennial herbs, with or without rhizomes and a few are even woody (subgenus ''Dendrosonchus,'' restricted to the Canary Islands and Madeira). Description The genus is named after the Ancient Greek for such plants. All are characterized by soft, somewhat irregularly lobed leaves that clasp the stem and, at least initially, form a basal rosette. The stem contains a milky latex. Flower heads are yellow and range in size from half to one inch in diameter; the florets are all of ray type. ''Sonchus'' fruits are single-seeded, dry and indehiscent. Sow thistles are common roadside plants, and while native to Eurasia and tropical Africa, they are found almost worldwide in temperate regions. Mature sow thistle stems can range from 30 cm to 2 m (1 to 6&n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juan Fernandez Islands
''Juan'' is a given name, the Spanish and Manx versions of ''John''. It is very common in Spain and in other Spanish-speaking communities around the world and in the Philippines, and also (pronounced differently) in the Isle of Man. In Spanish, the diminutive form (equivalent to ''Johnny'') is , with feminine form (comparable to ''Jane'', ''Joan'', or ''Joanna'') , and feminine diminutive (equivalent to ''Janet'', ''Janey'', ''Joanie'', etc.). Chinese terms * ( or 娟, 隽) 'beautiful, graceful' is a common given name for Chinese women. * () The Chinese character 卷, which in Mandarin is almost homophonic with the characters for the female name, is a division of a traditional Chinese manuscript or book and can be translated as 'fascicle', 'scroll', 'chapter', or 'volume'. Notable people * Juan (footballer, born 1979), Brazilian footballer * Juan (footballer, born 1982), Brazilian footballer * Juan (footballer, born March 2002), Brazilian footballer * Juan (footballer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kew Gardens
Kew Gardens is a botanical garden, botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botany, botanical and mycology, mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its living collections include some of the 27,000 taxa curated by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, while the herbarium, one of the largest in the world, has over preserved plant and fungal specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions and is a World Heritage Sites, World Heritage Site. Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst Place, Wakehurst in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, an internationally important botany, botanical research and education institution that employs over 1,100 staff and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Envir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Temperate House
The Temperate House, opened in May 1863, is a Grade I-listed showhouse for the largest plants in Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. Rectangular, with pitched roofs, its pillars support wrought-iron ribs. Decimus Burton and Irish engineer, Richard Turner, the designers, gave the House a mix of decorative motifs, finials, pediments, acanthus leaf capitals, Coade stone urns and statues. According to Greg Redwood, Kew's head of glasshouses, "The effect is similar to the contemporary iron pier pavilions of Eugenius Birch." Although construction began in 1860, it would not be completed until 1899. It was positioned to be the first feature visitors saw as they entered the gates with the anticipated coming of the first railway station at Kew expected to be at the end of the adjacent avenue. However, Kew Gardens rail station was built 500 yards to the north, leaving the glasshouse "somewhat stranded in the landscape". In 2011 Kew launched a £15m public appeal to address necessary repa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glucose
Glucose is a simple sugar with the molecular formula . Glucose is overall the most abundant monosaccharide, a subcategory of carbohydrates. Glucose is mainly made by plants and most algae during photosynthesis from water and carbon dioxide, using energy from sunlight, where it is used to make cellulose in cell walls, the most abundant carbohydrate in the world. In energy metabolism, glucose is the most important source of energy in all organisms. Glucose for metabolism is stored as a polymer, in plants mainly as starch and amylopectin, and in animals as glycogen. Glucose circulates in the blood of animals as blood sugar. The naturally occurring form of glucose is -glucose, while -glucose is produced synthetically in comparatively small amounts and is less biologically active. Glucose is a monosaccharide containing six carbon atoms and an aldehyde group, and is therefore an aldohexose. The glucose molecule can exist in an open-chain (acyclic) as well as ring (cyclic) form. Gluco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fructose
Fructose, or fruit sugar, is a Ketose, ketonic monosaccharide, simple sugar found in many plants, where it is often bonded to glucose to form the disaccharide sucrose. It is one of the three dietary monosaccharides, along with glucose and galactose, that are absorbed by the gut directly into the blood of the portal vein during digestion. The liver then converts both fructose and galactose into glucose, so that dissolved glucose, known as blood sugar, is the only monosaccharide present in circulating blood. Fructose was discovered by French chemist Augustin-Pierre Dubrunfaut in 1847. The name "fructose" was coined in 1857 by the English chemist William Allen Miller. Pure, dry fructose is a sweet, white, odorless, crystalline solid, and is the most water-soluble of all the sugars. Fructose is found in honey, tree and vine fruits, flowers, Berry, berries, and most List of root vegetables, root vegetables. Commercially, fructose is derived from sugar cane, sugar beets, and maize. Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sucrose
Sucrose, a disaccharide, is a sugar composed of glucose and fructose subunits. It is produced naturally in plants and is the main constituent of white sugar. It has the molecular formula . For human consumption, sucrose is extracted and refined from either sugarcane or sugar beet. Sugar mills – typically located in tropical regions near where sugarcane is grown – crush the cane and produce raw sugar which is shipped to other factories for refining into pure sucrose. Sugar beet factories are located in temperate climates where the beet is grown, and process the beets directly into refined sugar. The sugar-refining process involves washing the raw sugar crystals before dissolving them into a sugar syrup which is filtered and then passed over carbon to remove any residual colour. The sugar syrup is then concentrated by boiling under a vacuum and crystallized as the final purification process to produce crystals of pure sucrose that are clear, odorless, and sweet. Suga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hummingbird
Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics around the equator. They are small birds, with most species measuring in length. The smallest extant hummingbird species is the bee hummingbird, which weighs less than . The largest hummingbird species is the giant hummingbird, weighing . They are specialized for feeding on flower nectar, but all species also consume flying insects or spiders. Hummingbirds split from their sister group, the swifts and treeswifts, around 42 million years ago. The common ancestor of extant hummingbirds is estimated to have lived 22 million years ago in South America. They are known as hummingbirds because of the humming sound created by their beating wings, which flap at high frequencies audible to humans. They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-flapping rate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robinson Crusoe
''Robinson Crusoe'' () is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is presented as an autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer) – a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, roughly resembling Tobago, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued. The story has been thought to be based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish castaway who lived for four years on a Pacific island called "Más a Tierra" (now part of Chile) which was renamed Robinson Crusoe Island in 1966. Despite its simple narrative style, ''Robinson Crusoe'' was well received in the literary world and is often credited as ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
