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Sunflower River Blues
The common sunflower (''Helianthus annuus'') is a large annual forb of the genus ''Helianthus'' grown as a crop for its edible oily seeds. Apart from cooking oil production, it is also used as livestock forage (as a meal or a silage plant), as bird food, in some industrial applications, and as an ornamental in domestic gardens. Wild ''H. annuus'' is a widely branched annual plant with many flower heads. The domestic sunflower, however, often possesses only a single large inflorescence (flower head) atop an unbranched stem. The binomial name ''Helianthus annuus'' is derived from the Greek ''Helios'' 'sun' and ''anthos'' 'flower', while the epithet ''annuus'' means 'annual' in Latin. The plant was first domesticated in the Americas. Sunflower seeds were brought to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, where, along with sunflower oil, they became a widespread cooking ingredient. With time, bulk of industrial-scale production has shifted to Eastern Europe, and () Russia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as . Linnaeus was born in Råshult, the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his ' in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ligule
A ligule (from "strap", variant of ''lingula'', from ''lingua'' "tongue") is a thin outgrowth at the junction of leaf and leafstalk of many grasses (Poaceae) and sedges. A ligule is also a strap-shaped extension of the corolla, such as that of a ray floret in plants in the daisy family Asteraceae. Poaceae and Cyperaceae The ligule is part of the leaf that is found at the junction of the blade and sheath of the leaf. It may take several forms, but it is commonly some form of translucent membrane or a fringe of hairs. The membranous ligule can be very short 1–2 mm (Kentucky bluegrass, ''Poa pratensis'') to very long 10–20 mm (Johnson grass, ''Sorghum halepense''), it can also be smooth on the edge or very ragged. Some grasses do not have a ligule, for example barnyardgrass (''Echinochloa crus-galli''). A ligule can also be defined as a membrane-like tissue or row of delicate hairs typically found in grasses at the junction of the leaf sheath and blade. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spiral
In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a point, moving farther away as it revolves around the point. Helices Two major definitions of "spiral" in the American Heritage Dictionary are:Spiral ''American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language'', Houghton Mifflin Company, Fourth Edition, 2009. # a curve on a plane that winds around a fixed center point at a continuously increasing or decreasing distance from the point. # a three-dimensional curve that turns around an axis at a constant or continuously varying distance while moving parallel to the axis; a . The first definition describes a |
Golden Angle
In geometry, the golden angle is the smaller of the two angles created by sectioning the circumference of a circle according to the golden ratio; that is, into two arcs such that the ratio of the length of the smaller arc to the length of the larger arc is the same as the ratio of the length of the larger arc to the full circumference of the circle. Algebraically, let ''a+b'' be the circumference of a circle, divided into a longer arc of length ''a'' and a smaller arc of length ''b'' such that : \frac = \frac The golden angle is then the angle subtended by the smaller arc of length ''b''. It measures approximately 137.5077640500378546463487 ...° or in radians 2.39996322972865332 ... . The name comes from the golden angle's connection to the golden ratio ''φ''; the exact value of the golden angle is : 360\left(1 - \frac\right) = 360(2 - \varphi) = \frac = 180(3 - \sqrt)\text or : 2\pi \left( 1 - \frac\right) = 2\pi(2 - \varphi) = \frac = \pi(3 - \sqrt)\text, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turgor
Turgor pressure is the force within the cell that pushes the plasma membrane against the cell wall. It is also called ''hydrostatic pressure'', and is defined as the pressure in a fluid measured at a certain point within itself when at equilibrium. Generally, turgor pressure is caused by the osmotic flow of water and occurs in plants, fungi, and bacteria. The phenomenon is also observed in protists that have cell walls. This system is not seen in animal cells, as the absence of a cell wall would cause the cell to lyse when under too much pressure. The pressure exerted by the osmotic flow of water is called turgidity. It is caused by the osmotic flow of water through a selectively permeable membrane. Movement of water through a semipermeable membrane from a volume with a low solute concentration to one with a higher solute concentration is called osmotic flow. In plants, this entails the water moving from the low concentration solute outside the cell into the cell's vacuole. Mech ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pulvinus
A pulvinus (pl. ''pulvini'') is a joint-like thickening at the base of a plant leaf or leaflet that facilitates growth-independent movement. Pulvini are common, for example, in members of the bean family Fabaceae (Leguminosae) and the prayer plant family Marantaceae. Pulvini may be present at the base of the Petiole (botany), leaf stalk or on its other end (Apex (leaf), apex), where the leaf is attached, or in a compound leaf at the place where the leaflets are joined to its Rachis#In botany, middle stem. They consist of a core of vascular tissue within a flexible, bulky cylinder of thin-walled Ground tissue#Parenchyma, parenchyma cells. A pulvinus is also sometimes called a geniculum (meaning a knee-like structure in Latin). Pulvinar movement is caused by changes in turgor pressure leading to a contraction or expansion of the parenchyma tissue. The response is initiated when sucrose is unloaded from the phloem into the apoplast. The increased sugar concentration in the apoplast d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Circadian
A circadian rhythm (), or circadian cycle, is a natural, internal process that regulates the sleep–wake cycle and repeats roughly every 24 hours. It can refer to any process that originates within an organism (i.e., endogenous) and responds to the environment ( entrained by the environment). These 24-hour rhythms are driven by a circadian clock, and they have been widely observed in animals, plants, fungi and cyanobacteria. The term ''circadian'' comes from the Latin ''circa'', meaning "approximately", and ''dies'', meaning "day". Processes with 24-hour cycles are more generally called diurnal rhythms; diurnal rhythms should not be called circadian rhythms unless they can be confirmed as endogenous, and not environmental. Although circadian rhythms are endogenous, they are adjusted to the local environment by external cues called zeitgebers (German for "time givers"), which include light, temperature and redox cycles. In clinical settings, an abnormal circadian rhythm in humans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthesis
Anthesis is the period during which a flower is fully open and functional. It may also refer to the onset of that period. The onset of anthesis is spectacular in some species. In ''Banksia'' species, for example, anthesis involves the extension of the style far beyond the upper perianth parts. Anthesis of flowers is sequential within an inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ..., so when the style and perianth are different colours, the result is a striking colour change that gradually sweeps along the inflorescence. Flowers with diurnal anthesis generally are brightly colored in order to attract diurnal insects, such as butterflies. Flowers with nocturnal anthesis generally are white or less colorful, and as such, they contrast more strongly with the night ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gerard
John Gerard (also John Gerarde, c. 1545–1612) was an English herbalist with a large garden in Holborn, now part of London. His 1,484-page illustrated ''Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes'', first published in 1597, became a popular gardening and herbal book in English in the 17th century. Except for some added plants from his own garden and from North America, Gerard's ''Herbal'' is largely a plagiarized English translation of Rembert Dodoens's 1554 herbal, itself highly popular in Dutch, Latin, French and other English translations. Gerard's ''Herball'' drawings of plants and the printer's woodcuts are mainly derived from Continental European sources, but there is an original title page with a copperplate engraving by William Rogers. Two decades after Gerard's death, the book was corrected and expanded to about 1,700 pages. Life Early life and education Gerard was born at Nantwich, Cheshire, towards the end of 1545, receiving his only schooling at nearby Willaston, ab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heliotropism
Heliotropism, a form of tropism, is the diurnal or seasonal motion of plant parts (flowers or leaves) in response to the direction of the Sun. The habit of some plants to move in the direction of the Sun, a form of tropism, was already known by the Ancient Greeks. They named one of those plants after that property ''Heliotropium'', meaning "sun turn". The Greeks assumed it to be a passive effect, presumably the loss of fluid on the illuminated side, that did not need further study. Aristotle's logic that plants are passive and immobile organisms prevailed. In the 19th century, however, botanists discovered that growth processes in the plant were involved, and conducted increasingly in-depth experiments. A. P. de Candolle called this phenomenon in ''any'' plant ''heliotropism'' (1832). It was renamed phototropism in 1892, because it is a response to light rather than to the sun, and because the phototropism of algae in lab studies at that time strongly depended on the brightness (p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
