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Wool Alien
The term wool alien is used for any plant species whose occurrence at a particular site is due to transportation there as a result of the making of wool products. The most common source of wool aliens is when a plant, seed, or bur attaches to the wool of a sheep or other wool-producing animal prior to shearing. After the animal is shorn and the raw wool is transported to a refinery mill, the impurities are discarded along with the attached seed, which then successfully germinates. Wool aliens are typically found on waste ground near woollen mills. Wool cleanings have also been used as soil conditioners in orchards and fields, which may also contain wool alien species. Stork's-bills (''Erodium'') are particularly prone to appearing as wool aliens in Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Species
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms ''gut flora'' or ''skin flora''. Etymology The word "flora" comes from the Latin name of Flora, the goddess of plants, flowers, and fertility in Roman mythology. The technical term "flora" is then derived from a metonymy of this goddess at the end of the sixteenth century. It was first used in poetry to denote the natural vegetation of an area, but soon also assumed the meaning of a work cataloguing such vegetation. Moreover, "Flora" was used to refer to the flowers of an artificial garden in the seventeenth century. The distinction between vegetation (the general appearance of a community) and flora (the taxonomic composition of a community) was first made by Jules Thurmann (1849). Prior to this, the two terms were used indiscriminately.Thurmann, J. (1849). ''Essai de Phyt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wool
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool. As an animal fibre, wool consists of protein together with a small percentage of lipids. This makes it chemically quite distinct from cotton and other plant fibres, which are mainly cellulose. Characteristics Wool is produced by follicles which are small cells located in the skin. These follicles are located in the upper layer of the skin called the epidermis and push down into the second skin layer called the dermis as the wool fibers grow. Follicles can be classed as either primary or secondary follicles. Primary follicles produce three types of fiber: kemp, medullated fibers, and true wool fibers. Secondary follicles only produce true wool fibers. Medullated fibers share nearly identical characteristics to hair and are long but lack c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sheep Shearing
Sheep shearing is the process by which the woollen fleece of a sheep is cut off. The person who removes the sheep's wool is called a '' shearer''. Typically each adult sheep is shorn once each year (a sheep may be said to have been "shorn" or "sheared", depending upon dialect). The annual shearing most often occurs in a shearing shed, a facility especially designed to process often hundreds and sometimes more than 3,000 sheep per day. Sheep are shorn in all seasons, depending on the climate, management requirements and the availability of a woolclasser and shearers. Ewes are normally shorn prior to lambing in the warmer months, but consideration is typically made as to the welfare of the lambs by not shearing during cold climate winters. However, in high country regions, pre lamb shearing encourages ewes to seek shelter among the hillsides so that newborn lambs aren't completely exposed to the elements. Shorn sheep tolerate frosts well, but young sheep especially will suffe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erodium
''Erodium'' is a genus of flowering plants in the botanical family Geraniaceae. The genus includes about 60 species, native to North Africa, Indomalaya, the Middle East, and Australia. They are perennials, annuals, or subshrubs, with five-petalled flowers in shades of white, pink, and purple, that strongly resemble the better-known ''Geranium'' (cranesbill). Cultivated plants are known as filarees or heron's bill in North America, whereas in the British Isles they are usually called storksbills. Taxonomy Carl Linnaeus grouped in the same genus (''Geranium''), the three similar genera ''Erodium'', ''Geranium'', and ''Pelargonium''. The distinction between them was made by Charles Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle based on the number of stamens or anthers: five for ''Erodium'',Parnell, J. and Curtis. ''Webb's An Irish Flora.'' Cork University Press. seven for ''Pelargonium'', and ten for ''Geranium''. However, the three genera have the same characteristics in regard to their fruit, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is dominated by a maritime climate with narrow temperature differences between seasons. The 60% smaller island of Ireland is to the west—these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands and named substantial rocks, form the British Isles archipelago. Connected to mainland Europe until 9,000 years ago by a landbridge now known as Doggerland, Great Britain has been inhabited by modern humans for around 30,000 years. In 2011, it had a population of about , making it the world's third-most-populous island after Java in Indonesia and Honshu in Japan. The term "Great Britain" is often used to refer to England, Scotland and Wales, including their component adjoining islands. Great Britain and Northern Ireland now constitute the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plants And Humans
Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), 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 Glaucophyte, Glaucophyta, and consists of the green algae and Embryophyte, Embryophyta (land plants). The latter includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns and Fern ally, 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 colo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seeds
A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosperm plants. Seeds are the product of the ripened ovule, after the embryo sac is fertilized by sperm from pollen, forming a zygote. The embryo within a seed develops from the zygote, and grows within the mother plant to a certain size before growth is halted. The seed coat arises from the integuments of the ovule. Seeds have been an important development in the reproduction and success of vegetable gymnosperm and angiosperm plants, relative to more primitive plants such as ferns, mosses and liverworts, which do not have seeds and use water-dependent means to propagate themselves. Seed plants now dominate biological niches on land, from forests to grasslands both in hot and cold climates. The term "seed" also has a general meaning that anteda ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
