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Scrophularia Umbrosa
''Scrophularia umbrosa'', the green figwort, is a perennial herbaceous plant found in Europe and Asia. It grows in moist and cultivated waste ground. The species looks very similar to the closely related ''Scrophularia auriculata'' (water figwort). Green figwort has a greener stem than water figwort, and lacks the leaf auricles which give water figwort its Latin name. The plant is probably poisonous to cows. It is pollinated by bees and wasps. It can grow in semi-shade (light woodland) or no shade, but requires moist or wet soil. Conservation The global conservation status of this species, as of 2013, is least concern. In the United Kingdom it is a very locally distributed species though increasingly abundant. Folklore The plant was thought, by the doctrine of signatures The doctrine of signatures, dating from the time of Dioscorides and Galen, states that herbs resembling various parts of the body can be used by herbalists to treat ailments of those body parts. A theologi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Perennial Plant
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives more than two years. The term ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the years") is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. The term is also widely used to distinguish plants with little or no woody growth (secondary growth in girth) from trees and shrubs, which are also technically perennials. Perennialsespecially small flowering plantsthat grow and bloom over the spring and summer, die back every autumn and winter, and then return in the spring from their rootstock or other overwintering structure, are known as herbaceous perennials. However, depending on the rigours of local climate (temperature, moisture, organic content in the soil, microorganisms), a plant that is a perennial in its native habitat, or in a milder garden, may be treated by a gardener as an annual and planted out every year, from seed, from cuttings, or from divisions. Tomato vines, for example, live several y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herbaceous
Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition of the ''Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'' defines "herb" as: #"A plant whose stem does not become woody and persistent (as in a tree or shrub) but remains soft and succulent, and dies (completely or down to the root) after flowering"; #"A (freq. aromatic) plant used for flavouring or scent, in medicine, etc.". (See: Herb) The same dictionary defines "herbaceous" as: #"Of the nature of a herb; esp. not forming a woody stem but dying down to the root each year"; #"BOTANY Resembling a leaf in colour or texture. Opp. scarious". Botanical sources differ from each other on the definition of "herb". For instance, the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation includes the condition "when persisting over more than one growing season, the parts of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes (the archaea and bacteria). By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (Latin name for "green plants") which is sister of the Glaucophyta, and consists of the green algae and Embryophyta (land plants). The latter includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns and their allies, hornworts, liverworts, and mosses. Most plants are multicellular organisms. Green plants obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts that are derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic or mycotrophic and have lost the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scrophularia Auriculata
''Scrophularia auriculata'', the shoreline figwort or water figwort, is a perennial plant of the genus Scrophularia in the family Scrophulariaceae. It is found commonly in Western Europe and North Africa, on the margins of rivers, ponds and similar damp places. It is an upright plant reaching 70 cm with blunt oval, crenate leaves in alternate pairs on the greenish–purple square stem, most leaves may have two small lobes at their base. The spikes of flowers are held stiffly on square stems which arise from the main stem in the angle of the leaf stalks. The square stems have a wing running down each corner. These wings are more obvious than on the closely related common figwort (''Scrophularia nodosa ''Scrophularia nodosa'' (also called figwort, woodland figwort, and common figwort) is a perennial herbaceous plant found in temperate regions of the Northern hemisphere except western North America. It grows in moist and cultivated waste groun ...''). The flowers are small, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doctrine Of Signatures
The doctrine of signatures, dating from the time of Dioscorides and Galen, states that herbs resembling various parts of the body can be used by herbalists to treat ailments of those body parts. A theological justification, as stated by botanists such as William Coles, was that God would have wanted to show men what plants would be useful for. It is today considered to be pseudoscience, and has led to many deaths and severe illnesses. For instance birthwort (so-called because of its resemblance to the uterus), once used widely for pregnancies, is carcinogenic and very damaging to the kidneys, owing to its aristolochic acid content. As a defense against predation, many plants contain toxic chemicals, the action of which is not immediately apparent, or easily tied to the plant rather than other factors History The concept dates from the time of Dioscorides and Galen. Paracelsus (1493–1541) developed the concept, writing that "Nature marks each growth ... according to it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scrophularia
The genus ''Scrophularia'' of the family Scrophulariaceae comprises about 200 species of herbaceous flowering plants commonly known as figworts. Species of ''Scrophularia'' all share square stems, opposite leaves and open two-lipped flowers forming clusters at the end of their stems. The genus is found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. ''Scrophularia'' species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including ''Phymatopus hectoides''. Some species in this genus are known to contain potentially useful substances, such as iridoids, and several ''Scrophularia'' species, such as the Ningpo figwort (''S. ningpoensis''), have been used by herbal medicine practitioners around the world. The name ''Scrophularia'' comes from scrofula, a form of tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medicinal Plants
Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical compounds for various functions, including defense and protection against insects, fungi, diseases, and herbivorous mammals. The earliest historical records of herbs are found from the Sumerian civilization, where hundreds of medicinal plants including opium are listed on clay tablets, c. 3000 BC. The Ebers Papyrus from ancient Egypt, c. 1550 BC, describes over 850 plant medicines. The Greek physician Dioscorides, who worked in the Roman army, documented over 1000 recipes for medicines using over 600 medicinal plants in ''De materia medica'', c. 60 AD; this formed the basis of pharmacopoeias for some 1500 years. Drug research sometimes makes use of ethnobotany to search for pharmacologically active substances, and this approach has yielded hundreds of useful compounds. These include the common drugs asp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
