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Bitterleaf
''Vernonia amygdalina'', a member of the daisy family, is a small to medium-sized shrub that grows in tropical Africa. ''V. amygdalina'' typically grows to a height of . The leaves are elliptical and up to long. Its bark is rough. ''V. amygdalina'' is commonly called bitter leaf in English because of its bitter taste. Uses Food The leaves are a staple vegetable in soups and stews of various cultures throughout equatorial Africa. They are washed to reduce their bitterness, after which they are dried and used to prepare meat dishes. In Nigeria, leaves are also used in place of hops to brew beer. The leaves can also be used to make bitter leaf soup, a delicacy which is one of the most traditional soups in Nigeria. It is native to the Igbos of Eastern Nigeria. Other In Nigeria, twigs and sticks from this plant are used as a chewing stick for dental hygiene and the stems are used for soap in Uganda. In Ghana, the young leaves rather than the old, has gained credence for its potent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vernonia
''Vernonia'' is a genus of about 350 species of forbs and shrubs in the family Asteraceae. Some species of this genus are known as ironweeds. Some species are edible and of economic value. They are known for having intense purple flowers. There have been numerous distinct subgenera and subsections named in this genus, and some botanists have divided the genus into several distinct genera. For instance, the ''Flora of North America'' recognizes only about twenty species in ''Vernonia'' ''sensu stricto'', seventeen of which are in North America north of Mexico, with the others being found in South America. Taxonomy The genus was circumscribed by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber in Gen. Pl. ed. 8 vol.2 on page 541 in 1791. The genus name of ''Vernonia'' is in honour of William Vernon (1666/67 - ca.1711), who was an English plant collector, ( bryologist) and entomologist from Cambridge University, who collected in Maryland, USA in 1698. Species Species of this genus are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alire Raffeneau Delile
Alire Raffeneau Delile (23 January 1778, in Versailles – 5 July 1850, in Montpellier) was a French botanist. Biography Delile studied botany with Jean Lemonnier, and was in the Paris medical school in 1796. Egypt Delile participated in Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign where he described lotus and papyrus. Director of the Cairo botanical garden, he wrote the botanical sections of ''Travel in Lower and Upper Egypt'' by Dominique Vivant. He made a cast of the Rosetta Stone which allowed the reproduction of its Greek and Demotic inscriptions in his ''Description de l'Égypte''. United States In 1802, Delile was appointed French vice consul at Wilmington, North Carolina, and also asked to form an herbarium of all American plants that could be naturalized in France. He sent to Paris several cases of seeds and grains, and discovered some new graminea and presented them to Palisot de Beauvois, who described them in his ''Agrostographie''. Raffeneau made extensive explorations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asteraceae
Asteraceae () is a large family (biology), family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the Order (biology), order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchidaceae, and which is the larger family is unclear as the quantity of Extant taxon, extant species in each family is unknown. The Asteraceae were first described in the year 1740 and given the original name Composita, Compositae. The family is commonly known as the aster, Daisy (flower), daisy, composite, or sunflower family. Most species of Asteraceae are herbaceous plants, and may be Annual plant, annual, Biennial plant, biennial, or Perennial plant, perennial, but there are also shrubs, vines, and trees. The family has a widespread distribution, from subpolar to tropical regions, in a wide variety of habitats. Most occur in Hot desert climate, hot desert and cold or hot Semi-arid climate, semi-desert climates, and they are found on ever ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surface area.Sayre, April Pulley (1999), ''Africa'', Twenty-First Century Books. . With nearly billion people as of , it accounts for about of the world's human population. Demographics of Africa, Africa's population is the youngest among all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Based on 2024 projections, Africa's population will exceed 3.8 billion people by 2100. Africa is the least wealthy inhabited continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including Geography of Africa, geography, Climate of Africa, climate, corruption, Scramble for Africa, colonialism, the Cold War, and neocolonialism. Despite this lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigeria
Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean to the south. It covers an area of . With Demographics of Nigeria, a population of more than 230 million, it is the List of African countries by population, most populous country in Africa, and the List of countries and dependencies by population, world's sixth-most populous country. Nigeria borders Niger in Niger–Nigeria border, the north, Chad in Chad–Nigeria border, the northeast, Cameroon in Cameroon–Nigeria border, the east, and Benin in Benin–Nigeria border, the west. Nigeria is a Federation, federal republic comprising 36 States of Nigeria, states and the Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria, Federal Capital Territory, where its capital, Abuja, is located. The List of Nigerian cities by population, largest city in Nigeria by population is Lagos, one of the largest List of largest cities, metr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hops
Hops are the flowers (also called seed cones or strobiles) of the hop plant ''Humulus lupulus'', a member of the Cannabaceae family of flowering plants. They are used primarily as a bittering, flavouring, and stability agent in beer, to which, in addition to bitterness, they impart floral, fruity, or citrus flavours and aromas. Hops are also used for various purposes in other beverages and herbal medicine. The hops plants have separate female and male plants, and only female plants are used for commercial production. The hop plant is a vigorous climbing herbaceous perennial, usually trained to grow up strings in a field called a hopfield, hop garden (in the South of England), or hop yard (in the West Country and United States) when grown commercially. Many different varieties of hops are grown by farmers around the world, with different types used for particular styles of beer. The first documented use of hops in beer is from the 9th century, though Hildegard of Bingen, 300 y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Common Chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (; ''Pan troglodytes''), also simply known as the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close relative the bonobo was more commonly known as the pygmy chimpanzee, this species was often called the common chimpanzee or the robust chimpanzee. The chimpanzee and the bonobo are the only species in the genus ''Pan''. Evidence from fossils and DNA sequencing shows that ''Pan'' is a sister taxon to the human lineage and is thus humans' closest living relative. The chimpanzee is covered in coarse black hair but has a bare face, fingers, toes, palms of the hands, and soles of the feet. It is larger and more robust than the bonobo, weighing for males and for females and standing . The chimpanzee lives in groups that range in size from 15 to 150 members, although individuals travel and forage in much smaller groups during the day. The species lives ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leaf Vegetables
A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, flower, and fruit collectively form the shoot system. In most leaves, the primary photosynthetic tissue is the palisade mesophyll and is located on the upper side of the blade or lamina of the leaf, but in some species, including the mature foliage of ''Eucalyptus'', palisade mesophyll is present on both sides and the leaves are said to be isobilateral. The leaf is an integral part of the stem system, and most leaves are flattened and have distinct upper ( adaxial) and lower ( abaxial) surfaces that differ in color, hairiness, the number of stomata (pores that intake and output gases), the amount and structure of epicuticular wax, and other features. Leaves are mostly green in color due to the presence of a compound called chlorophyll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plants Used In Traditional African Medicine
Plants are the eukaryotes that form the kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria to produce sugars from carbon dioxide and water, using the green pigment chlorophyll. Exceptions are parasitic plants that have lost the genes for chlorophyll and photosynthesis, and obtain their energy from other plants or fungi. Most plants are multicellular, except for some green algae. Historically, as in Aristotle's biology, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi. Definitions have narrowed since then; current definitions exclude fungi and some of the algae. By the definition used in this article, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (green plants), which consists of the green algae and the embryophytes or land plants (hornworts, liverworts, mosses, lycophytes, ferns, conifers and other gymnosper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
