|
Thonningia
''Thonningia'' is a monotypic genus of flowering plants in the family Balanophoraceae containing the single species ''Thonningia sanguinea''.Nickrent, DParasitic Plant Classification.The Parasitic Plant Connection. Department of Plant Biology, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.Leistner, O. A. (2005)Balanophoraceae. ''Seed Plants of Southern Tropical Africa: Families and Genera''. Southern African Botanical Diversity Network Report No. 26. pg 103. It is distributed throughout much of southern and western Africa, particularly the tropical regions. Common names for the plant include ground pineapple.Burkill, H. M. (1985)''Thonningia sanguinea''.''The Useful Plants of West Tropical Africa, Vol 1.'' Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. A familiar plant to humans, it has an extremely long list of common names in many African languages. Many names are inspired by the resemblance of the plant's inflorescence to a pineapple or palm tree. Some of the names can be translated as pineapple of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balanophoraceae
The Balanophoraceae are a subtropical to tropical family of obligate parasitic flowering plants, notable for their unusual development and formerly obscure affinities. In the broadest circumscription, the family consists of 16 genera. Alternatively, three genera may be split off into the segregate family Mystropetalaceae. The plants are normally found in moist inland forests growing on tree roots and have an above ground inflorescence with the overall appearance of a fungus, composed of numerous minute flowers. The inflorescences develop inside the tuberous underground part of the plant, before rupturing it and surfacing. The plants are monoecious, or dioecious, and the fruits are indehiscent drupes or nuts. The underground portion, which attaches itself to the host, looks like a tuber, and is not a proper root system. The plants contain no chlorophyll. ''Balanophora'' means "bearing an acorn" (from the shape of the female inflorescence). Taxonomy In the classification system of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Vahl
Martin Henrichsen Vahl (10 October 1749 – 24 December 1804) was a Danish-Norwegian botanist, herbalist and zoologist. Biography Martin Vahl was born in Bergen, Norway and attended Bergen Cathedral School. He studied botany at the University of Copenhagen and at Uppsala University under Carl Linnaeus. He edited ''Flora Danica'' fasc. XVI-XXI (1787–1799), ''Symbolæ Botanicæ'' I-III (1790–1794), ''Eclogæ Americanæ'' I-IV (1796–1807) and ''Enumeratio Plantarum'' I-II (1804–1805). He lectured at the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden from 1779 to 1782. Vahl made several research trips in Europe and North Africa between 1783 and 1788. He became professor at the Society for Natural History at the University of Copenhagen in 1786 and was a full professor of botany from 1801 to his death. In 1792, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He died in Copenhagen, Denmark at age 55. His son Jens Vahl also became a botanist. Authorit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantation
A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The crops that are grown include cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar cane, opium, sisal, oil seeds, oil palms, fruits, rubber trees and forest trees. Protectionist policies and natural comparative advantage have sometimes contributed to determining where plantations are located. In modern use the term is usually taken to refer only to large-scale estates, but in earlier periods, before about 1800, it was the usual term for a farm of any size in the southern parts of British North America, with, as Noah Webster noted, "farm" becoming the usual term from about Maryland northwards. It was used in most British colonies, but very rarely in the United Kingdom itself in this sense. There, as also in America, it was used mainly for tree plantations, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Traditional African Medicine
Traditional African medicine is a range of traditional medicine disciplines involving Indigenous peoples of Africa, indigenous herbalism and Traditional African religions, African spirituality, typically including divination, diviners, midwives, and herbalism, herbalists. Practitioners of traditional African medicine claim to be able to cure a variety of diverse conditions including cancer, psychiatric disorders, high blood pressure, cholera, most venereal diseases, epilepsy, asthma, eczema, fever, anxiety, depression, benign prostatic hyperplasia, urinary tract infections, gout, and healing of wounds and burns and even Ebola. Diagnosis is reached through spiritual means and a treatment is prescribed, usually consisting of a herbal remedy that is considered to have not only healing abilities but also symbolic and spiritual significance. Traditional African medicine, with its belief that illness is not derived from chance occurrences, but through spiritual or social imbalance, dif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mutualism (biology)
Mutualism describes the ecological interaction between two or more species where each species has a net benefit. Mutualism is a common type of ecological interaction. Prominent examples include most vascular plants engaged in mutualistic interactions with mycorrhizae, flowering plants being pollinated by animals, vascular plants being dispersed by animals, and corals with zooxanthellae, among many others. Mutualism can be contrasted with interspecific competition, in which each species experiences ''reduced'' fitness, and exploitation, or parasitism, in which one species benefits at the expense of the other. The term ''mutualism'' was introduced by Pierre-Joseph van Beneden in his 1876 book ''Animal Parasites and Messmates'' to mean "mutual aid among species". Mutualism is often conflated with two other types of ecological phenomena: cooperation and symbiosis. Cooperation most commonly refers to increases in fitness through within-species (intraspecific) interactions, althoug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morellia
''Morellia'' is a very large genus from the fly family Muscidae. ''Morellia'' are plumpish black flies, largely lacking eye hairs - sparse at most. they have a white dusting on the parafacialia and the scutum has 4 distinct longitudinal stripes. Selected species *'' M. aenescens'' Robineau-Desvoidy, 1830 *'' M. asetosa'' Baranoff, 1925 *'' M. basalis'' (Walker Walker or The Walker may refer to: People *Walker (given name) *Walker (surname) *Walker (Brazilian footballer) (born 1982), Brazilian footballer Places In the United States *Walker, Arizona, in Yavapai County *Walker, Mono County, California * ..., 1853) *'' M. hortorum'' ( Fallén, 1817) *'' M. micans'' ( Macquart, 1855) *'' M. podagrica'' ( Loew, 1857) *'' M. simplex'' ( Loew, 1857) References Muscidae Diptera of North America Diptera of Europe Brachycera genera Taxa named by Jean-Baptiste Robineau-Desvoidy {{Muscidae-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nectar
Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide herbivore protection. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, honeyeaters and bats. Nectar plays a crucial role in the foraging economics and evolution of nectar-eating species; for example, nectar foraging behavior is largely responsible for the divergent evolution of the African honey bee, ''A. m. scutellata'' and the western honey bee. Nectar is an economically important substance as it is the sugar source for honey. It is also useful in agriculture and horticulture because the adult stages of some predatory insects feed on nectar. For example, a number of parasitoid wasps (e.g. the social wasp species ''Apoica flavissima'') rely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technomyrmex
''Technomyrmex'' is a genus of ants in the subfamily Dolichoderinae. With 98 species, it is one of the largest and most diverse ant genera in the Dolichoderinae. The genus distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical zones with most species occurring in the Oriental-Malesian and Afrotropical regions. One species, ''Technomyrmex albipes'' is a tramp ant now widespread throughout the tropics due to human activities. Species *'' Technomyrmex albicoxis'' Donisthorpe, 1945 *''Technomyrmex albipes ''Technomyrmex albipes'', commonly known as the white-footed ant, is a species of ant first described in 1861 from Sulawesi, Indonesia by the British entomologist Frederick Smith. Invasive pest ants in Florida, previously identified as ''T. albi ...'' (Smith, 1861) *'' Technomyrmex andrei'' Emery, 1899 *'' Technomyrmex antennus'' Zhou, 2001 *'' Technomyrmex anterops'' Bolton, 2007 *'' Technomyrmex antonii'' Forel, 1902 *'' Technomyrmex arnoldinus'' Forel, 1913 *'' Technomyrmex aust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calliphoridae
The Calliphoridae (commonly known as blow flies, blow-flies, carrion flies, bluebottles, greenbottles, or cluster flies) are a family of insects in the order Diptera, with almost 1,900 known species. The maggot larvae, often used as fishing bait, are known as gentles. The family is known to be polyphyletic, but much remains disputed regarding proper treatment of the constituent taxa, some of which are occasionally accorded family status (e.g., Bengaliidae and Helicoboscidae). The name blowfly comes from an older English term for meat that had eggs laid on it, which was said to be flyblown. The first known association of the term "blow" with flies appears in the plays of William Shakespeare: '' Love's Labour's Lost'', '' The Tempest'', and '' Antony and Cleopatra''. Description Characteristics Calliphoridae adults are commonly shiny with metallic colouring, often with blue, green, or black thoraces and abdomens. Antennae are three-segmented and aristate. The aristae are pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muscidae
Muscidae are a family of flies found in the superfamily Muscoidea. Muscidae, some of which are commonly known as house flies or stable flies due to their synanthropy, are worldwide in distribution and contain almost 4,000 described species in over 100 genera. Most species are not synanthropic. Adults can be predatory, hematophagous, saprophagous, or feed on a number of types of plant and animal exudates. They can be attracted to various substances including sugar, sweat, tearand blood. Larvae occur in various habitats including decaying vegetation, dry and wet soil, nests of insects and birds, fresh water, and carrion. The Housefly, housefly, ''Musca domestica'', is the best known and most important species. Some, from the genera ''Hydrotaea'' and ''Muscina'', are involved in forensic case studies.aces the linkCluichí Identifying characteristics The antennae are three-segmented and aristate; vein Rs is two-branched, a frontal suture is present, and the calypters are we ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pollination
Pollination is the transfer of pollen from an anther of a plant to the stigma of a plant, later enabling fertilisation and the production of seeds, most often by an animal or by wind. Pollinating agents can be animals such as insects, birds, and bats; water; wind; and even plants themselves, when self-pollination occurs within a closed flower. Pollination often occurs within a species. When pollination occurs between species, it can produce hybrid offspring in nature and in plant breeding work. In angiosperms, after the pollen grain (gametophyte) has landed on the stigma, it germinates and develops a pollen tube which grows down the style until it reaches an ovary. Its two gametes travel down the tube to where the gametophyte(s) containing the female gametes are held within the carpel. After entering an ovum cell through the micropyle, one male nucleus fuses with the polar bodies to produce the endosperm tissues, while the other fuses with the ovule to produce the embr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chocolate
Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cacao seed kernels that is available as a liquid, solid, or paste, either on its own or as a flavoring agent in other foods. Cacao has been consumed in some form since at least the Olmec civilization (19th-11th century BCE), and the majority of Mesoamerican people ─ including the Maya and Aztecs ─ made chocolate beverages. The seeds of the cacao tree have an intense bitter taste and must be fermented to develop the flavor. After fermentation, the seeds are dried, cleaned, and roasted. The shell is removed to produce cocoa nibs, which are then ground to cocoa mass, unadulterated chocolate in rough form. Once the cocoa mass is liquefied by heating, it is called chocolate liquor. The liquor may also be cooled and processed into its two components: cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Baking chocolate, also called bitter chocolate, contains cocoa solids and cocoa butter in varying proportions, without any added sugar. Powder ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
