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Wüstenhaus Schönbrunn
The Wüstenhaus Schönbrunn (''Schönbrunn Desert House'') is a desert botanical exhibit in Vienna, Austria. It is located in the Sonnenuhrhaus (“Sundial House”), which was built in 1904 as the newest of the four botanical houses in Schönbrunn Palace, Schönbrunn Palace Park. The desert exhibit opened in 2004 as a counterpart to the “Rainforest House” that opened in 2002 in the nearby Tiergarten Schönbrunn, Zoo Vienna. History The Sundial House stands opposite the Palmenhaus Schönbrunn, Schönbrunn Palm House (''Palmenhaus''; another botanical exhibit), directly between the Hietzing Gate and the Zoo. The unprepossessing building owes its name to the sundial (''Sonnenuhr'') located in the gardens to the south. It was built with the encouragement of Charles von Hügel – diplomat, explorer and founder of the Vienna Horticultural Society – to replace an earlier greenhouse which could no longer meet its plants' needs. At first it housed the plants of the extensive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desert
A desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the land surface of the Earth is arid or semi-arid. This includes much of the polar regions, where little precipitation occurs, and which are sometimes called polar deserts or "cold deserts". Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification or by their geographical location. Deserts are formed by weathering processes as large variations in temperature between day and night put strains on the rocks, which consequently break in pieces. Although rain seldom occurs in deserts, there are occasional downpours that can result in flash floods. Rain falling on hot rocks can cause them to shatter, and the resulting fragments and rubble strewn over the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bombing Of Vienna In World War II
The city of Vienna in Austria was bombed 52 times during World War II, and 37,000 houses of the city were lost, 20% of the entire city. Only 41 civilian vehicles survived the raids, and more than 3,000 bomb craters were counted. History After a lone Soviet air raid conducted on 4 September 1942, , 109 B-17s bomb the oil refinery at Ruhland (the Fifteenth's deepest penetration into Germany). 103 others bomb the alternate target, the refinery at Kolín, Czechoslovakia. 470+ other bombers attack targets in Austria, including Moosbierbaum, Schwechat, and Vienna/Floridsdorf oil refineries. , - , , Floridsdorf , , - , , Korneuburg , , - , , , 300 bombs were dropped on the Tiergarten Schönbrunn, the world's oldest zoo. 2,000 animals out of 3,500 died including a bull rhino, a favourite of the zoo-keepers. , - , , Schwechat , , - , , 'Expand''/sup> , In Austria, 760+ B-17s and B-24s, with fighter escort, hit the Korneuburg and Kagran oil refineries. , - , , ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tourist Attractions In Vienna
The tourist attractions of Vienna concentrate in three distinct areas. The largest cluster, centred on Schönbrunn Palace, attracted around five million visitors in 2009, down from six million in 2008. Museums and exhibitions of Hofburg Palace accounted for nearly two million visitors in 2008, with a significant decline in 2009. The third, and the newest, cluster of modern art museums in Museumsquartier attracted less than one million visitors.According to the Vienna Tourist Board, the Schönbrunn cluster includes the Palace itself, Tiergarten Schönbrunn, the Palmenhaus, the Wüstenhaus, the Imperial Coach Collection (Wagenburg), the Maze Gardens (Irrgarten) and the Privy Gardens (KronPrinzgarten). See Sehenwurdigkeiten 2007 (in German)' and Sehenwurdigkeiten 2008 (in German)' for exact composition of each of three clusters. Nearby duo of Kunsthistorisches and Naturhistorisches museums, located halfway between Museumsquartier and Hofburg, also reported around one million visitor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pereskia
''Pereskia'' is a small genus of about four species of cacti that do not look much like other types of cacti, having substantial leaves and non-succulent stems. The genus is named after Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, a 16th-century French botanist. The genus was more widely circumscribed until molecular phylogenetic studies showed that it was paraphyletic. The majority of species have since been transferred to ''Leuenbergeria'' and ''Rhodocactus''. Although ''Pereskia'' does not resemble other cacti in its overall morphology, close examination shows spines developing from areoles, and the distinctive floral cup of the cactus family. Description The four species of ''Pereskia'' as the genus is now circumscribed share many features in common with ''Leuenbergeria'' and ''Rhodocactus'', which were formerly included in a broadly defined ''Pereskia''. They are shrubs, trees or climbing vines, with maximum heights varying between 3 and 10 m. Unlike the great majority of species ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botanischer Garten Der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt Am Main
The Botanischer Garten Frankfurt am Main (7 hectares) is a botanical garden and arboretum formerly maintained by the Goethe University and since 2012 administered by the City of Frankfurt. It is located at Siesmayerstraße 72, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and opens daily in the warmer months. First Garden: near the Eschenheimer Tor (1767–1907). Frankfurt's first botanical garden was created in the years 1763–1774 by Johann Christian Senckenberg (1707–1772), and was operated by the Senckenberg Foundation as a ''hortus medicus'' for the cultivation of medicinal herbs for the foundation's public hospital and medical institute. Its site, about 1 hectare in size, was patterned on Carl Linnaeus' garden in Uppsala. Until 1867 every director was a physician. By 1903, the garden cultivated more than 4,000 species but its extent had been gradually reduced by hospital expansion until just 7,000 m2 remained. Second Garden: adjacent to the Palmengarten (1907–1958). After lengthy negot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Welwitsch
Friedrich Martin Josef Welwitsch (25 February 1806 – 20 October 1872) was an Austrian explorer and botanist who in Angola was the first European to describe the plant ''Welwitschia mirabilis''. His report received wide attention among the botanists and general public, comparable only to the discovery of two other plants in the 19th century, namely ''Victoria amazonica'' and ''Rafflesia arnoldii''.Strlič, Matija. "Dr. Friderik Velbič, 1806–1872". ''Proteus, the journal of the Natural Sciences Society of Slovenia''. Year 61, No. 9/10 (pp. 396-404). ISSN 0033-1805. In Angola, Welwitsch also discovered ''Rhipsalis baccifera'', the only cactus species naturally occurring outside the New World. It was found a few years later in Sri Lanka too, which reignited the now already one-and-a-half-century-old debate on the origin of cacti in Africa and Asia. At the time, the debate concluded with the conviction of numerous authors that they were introduced and spread by migratory bird ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welwitschia
''Welwitschia'' is a monotypic gymnosperm genus, comprising solely the distinctive ''Welwitschia mirabilis'', endemic to the Namib desert within Namibia and Angola. ''Welwitschia'' is the only living genus of the family Welwitschiaceae and order Welwitschiales in the division Gnetophyta, and is one of three living genera in Gnetophyta, alongside ''Gnetum'' and ''Ephedra''. Informal sources commonly refer to the plant as a "living fossil". Naming ''Welwitschia'' is named after the Austrian botanist and doctor Friedrich Welwitsch, who described the plant in Angola in 1859. Welwitsch was so overwhelmed by the plant that he, "could do nothing but kneel down ..and gaze at it, half in fear lest a touch should prove it a figment of the imagination." Joseph Dalton Hooker of the Linnean Society of London, using Welwitsch's description and collected material along with material from the artist Thomas Baines who had independently recorded the plant in Namibia, described the species. Wel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Desert Jerboa
The genus ''Jaculus'' is a member of the Dipodinae subfamily of dipodoid rodents (jerboas). ''Jaculus'' species are distributed in desert and semi-arid regions across northern Africa, the Sahara, the Horn of Africa, Arabia, the Middle East, and Central Asia. Collectively, the species within the genus may be commonly referred to as "desert jerboas", although this more particularly applied to the lesser Egyptian jerboa (''Jaculus jaculus'').Myers ''et al.'' (2006). Species The following species are recognised for the genus ''Jaculus'': * Blanford's jerboa, ''Jaculus blanfordi'' * Lesser Egyptian jerboa, ''Jaculus jaculus'' * Greater Egyptian jerboa, ''Jaculus orientalis'' * Thaler's jerboa ''Jaculus thaleri'' * African hammada jerboa African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** Ethn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Succulent Plant
In botany, succulent plants, also known as succulents, are plants with parts that are thickened, fleshy, and engorged, usually to retain water in arid climates or soil conditions. The word ''succulent'' comes from the Latin word ''sucus'', meaning "juice" or "sap". Succulent plants may store water in various structures, such as leaf, leaves and Plant stem, stems. The water content of some succulent organs can get up to 90–95%, such as ''Glottiphyllum semicyllindricum'' and ''Mesembryanthemum barkleyii''. Some definitions also include roots, thus geophytes that survive unfavorable periods by dying back to underground storage organs may be regarded as succulents. The habitats of these water-preserving plants are often in areas with high temperatures and low rainfall, such as deserts, but succulents may be found even in Alpine climate, alpine ecosystems growing in rocky soil. Succulents are characterized by their ability to thrive on limited water sources, such as mist and dew, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rust
Rust is an iron oxide, a usually reddish-brown oxide formed by the reaction of iron and oxygen in the catalytic presence of water or air moisture. Rust consists of hydrous iron(III) oxides (Fe2O3·nH2O) and iron(III) oxide-hydroxide (FeO(OH), Fe(OH)3), and is typically associated with the corrosion of refined iron. Given sufficient time, any iron mass, in the presence of water and oxygen, could eventually convert entirely to rust. Surface rust is commonly flaky and friable, and provides no passivational protection to the underlying iron, unlike the formation of patina on copper surfaces. ''Rusting'' is the common term for corrosion of elemental iron and its alloys such as steel. Many other metals undergo similar corrosion, but the resulting oxides are not commonly called "rust". Several forms of rust are distinguishable both visually and by spectroscopy, and form under different circumstances. Other forms of rust include the result of reactions between iron and chloride ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sundial House (Schönbrunn) 20080216 073
A sundial is a horological device that tells the time of day (referred to as civil time in modern usage) when direct sunlight shines by the apparent position of the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word, it consists of a flat plate (the ''dial'') and a gnomon, which casts a shadow onto the dial. As the Sun appears to move through the sky, the shadow aligns with different hour-lines, which are marked on the dial to indicate the time of day. The ''style'' is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, though a single point or ''nodus'' may be used. The gnomon casts a broad shadow; the shadow of the style shows the time. The gnomon may be a rod, wire, or elaborately decorated metal casting. The style must be parallel to the axis of the Earth's rotation for the sundial to be accurate throughout the year. The style's angle from horizontal is equal to the sundial's geographical latitude. The term ''sundial'' can refer to any device that uses the Sun's altitude or azimuth (o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Butterfly Zoo
A butterfly house, conservatory, or lepidopterarium is a facility which is specifically intended for the breeding and display of butterflies with an emphasis on education. Some butterfly houses also feature other insects and arthropods. Butterfly houses are owned and operated by museums, universities, non-profit corporations, and private individuals as part of their residence; as well as small businesses that are owner operated. History Live butterfly exhibits became popular in England in the end of the 1970s, appealing to the British love of greenhouses and natural settings. The tropical world's first live butterfly and insect sanctuary is Penang Butterfly Farm in Penang, Malaysia, established on March 29, 1986. The first butterfly house in the United States, Butterfly World, opened in Coconut Creek, Florida, in 1988. Activities Butterfly houses are typically open to the public. Exploration of such facilities may be with a guide or self-paced. Guided tours may last abou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
