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Chamaegigas
''Chamaegigas'' is a genus which contains only one species, ''Chamaegigas intrepidus'', an aquatic plant that is native to central-west Namibia, growing in semi-arid and savanna regions. It grows in shallow temporary pools on granite inselbergs, surviving regular environmental extremes that include drastic daily changes in temperature and pH, along with extreme fluctuations in wetting and drying. ''Chamaegigas intrepidus'' means "intrepid dwarf giant", referring to the tiny plant's ability to thrive even in the desert. Description ''Chamaegigas intrepidus'' grows in intertwined mats, with two different leaves. One is an underwater awl-shaped leaf that is long. Two pairs of unequal length leaves float on the water, and oval-shaped. The plant grows from a small rhizome growing in a combination of sand, organic debris, leaf remains, and animal dung that is deep. The flowers have two lips, and are white or pale pink with purple speckles. ''Chamaegigas intrepidus'' is one of appr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linderniaceae
Linderniaceae is a family of flowering plants in the order Lamiales, which consists of about 25 genera and 265 species occurring worldwide. ''Vandellia micrantha'' is eaten in Laos, but tastes bitter. Best known are the wishbone flowers ''Torenia fournieri'' and ''Torenia thouarsii'', which are used as bedding plants especially in the tropics. ''Micranthemum'' is sold as an aquarium plant when it is called 'baby tears'. In other classifications it used to be included within family Scrophulariaceae ''sensu lato'' or more recently in Plantaginaceae ''sensu lato'', but several authors have demonstrated that this taxon should be segregated Oxelman B., Kornhall, P., Olmstead, R. G. & Bremer, B. (2005). "Further disintegration of Scrophulariaceae". ''Taxon'' 54(2):411–425. from those families, as Linderniaceae, and it has been recognized by LAPG II and APG III. Recently a phylogeny has been published and two new Brazilian genera '' Catimbaua'' and '' Isabelcristinia'' were recently ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Dinter
Moritz Kurt Dinter (10 June 1868 – 16 December 1945) was a German botanist and explorer in South West Africa. Education and career Dinter was born in Bautzen, where he attended the Realschule. Having completed his military service and joined the Botanic Gardens at Dresden and Strasbourg to further his botanical and horticultural interests. He was appointed assistant to Prof. Carl Georg Oscar Drude, the plant geographer, in Dresden. As a result of his keen interest in exotic succulents, he was selected by Sir Thomas Hanbury to manage his acclimatisation garden, the Giardini Botanici Hanbury at La Mortola, near Ventimiglia, Italy, Ventimiglia on the Italian Riviera. This garden had a large collection of South African bulbs and succulents. He also spent about six months at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Kew, returned to La Mortola and decided on a trip to South West Africa. He landed at Swakopmund in June 1897, having sailed on the "Melitta Bohlem". Dinter started his collection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. Although it does not border Zimbabwe, less than 200 metres (660 feet) of the Botswanan right bank of the Zambezi River separates the two countries. Namibia gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990, following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek. Namibia is a member state of the United Nations (UN), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union (AU) and the Commonwealth of Nations. The driest country in sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia has been inhabited since pre-historic times by the San, Damara and Nama people. Around the 14th century, immigrating Bantu peoples arrived as part of the Bantu expansion. Since then, the Bantu groups, the largest being the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semi-arid
A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-arid climates, depending on variables such as temperature, and they give rise to different biomes. Defining attributes of semi-arid climates A more precise definition is given by the Köppen climate classification, which treats steppe climates (''BSk'' and ''BSh'') as intermediates between desert climates (BW) and humid climates (A, C, D) in ecological characteristics and agricultural potential. Semi-arid climates tend to support short, thorny or scrubby vegetation and are usually dominated by either grasses or shrubs as it usually can't support forests. To determine if a location has a semi-arid climate, the precipitation threshold must first be determined. The method used to find the precipitation threshold (in millimeters): *multip ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Savanna
A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to support an unbroken herbaceous layer consisting primarily of grasses. According to '' Britannica'', there exists four savanna forms; ''savanna woodland'' where trees and shrubs form a light canopy, ''tree savanna'' with scattered trees and shrubs, ''shrub savanna'' with distributed shrubs, and ''grass savanna'' where trees and shrubs are mostly nonexistent.Smith, Jeremy M.B.. "savanna". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Sep. 2016, https://www.britannica.com/science/savanna/Environment. Accessed 17 September 2022. Savannas maintain an open canopy despite a high tree density. It is often believed that savannas feature widely spaced, scattered trees. However, in many savannas, tree densities are higher and trees are more regularly spaced than in for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inselbergs
An inselberg or monadnock () is an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or virtually level surrounding plain. In Southern Africa a similar formation of granite is known as a koppie, an Afrikaans word ("little head") from the Dutch diminutive word ''kopje''. If the inselberg is dome-shaped and formed from granite or gneiss, it can also be called a bornhardt, though not all bornhardts are inselbergs. An inselberg results when a body of rock resistant to erosion, such as granite, occurring within a body of softer rocks, is exposed by differential erosion and lowering of the surrounding landscape. Etymology Inselberg The word ''inselberg'' is a loan word from German, and means "island mountain". The term was coined in 1900 by geologist Wilhelm Bornhardt (1864–1946) to describe the abundance of such features found in eastern Africa. At that time, the term applied only to arid landscape features. However, it has sin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhizome
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (; , ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow horizontally. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards. A rhizome is the main stem of the plant that runs underground horizontally. A stolon is similar to a rhizome, but a stolon sprouts from an existing stem, has long internodes, and generates new shoots at the end, such as in the strawberry plant. In general, rhizomes have short internodes, send out roots from the bottom of the nodes, and generate new upward-growing shoots from the top of the nodes. A stem tuber is a thickened part of a rhizome or stolon that has been enlarged for use as a storage organ. In general, a tuber is high in starch, e.g. the potato, which is a modified stolon. The term "tuber" is often used imprecisely and is sometimes appli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vascular Plant
Vascular plants (), also called tracheophytes () or collectively Tracheophyta (), form a large group of land plants ( accepted known species) that have lignified tissues (the xylem) for conducting water and minerals throughout the plant. They also have a specialized non-lignified tissue (the phloem) to conduct products of photosynthesis. Vascular plants include the clubmosses, horsetails, ferns, gymnosperms (including conifers), and angiosperms (flowering plants). Scientific names for the group include Tracheophyta, Tracheobionta and Equisetopsida ''sensu lato''. Some early land plants (the rhyniophytes) had less developed vascular tissue; the term eutracheophyte has been used for all other vascular plants, including all living ones. Historically, vascular plants were known as "higher plants", as it was believed that they were further evolved than other plants due to being more complex organisms. However, this is an antiquated remnant of the obsolete scala naturae, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fern
A fern (Polypodiopsida or Polypodiophyta ) is a member of a group of vascular plants (plants with xylem and phloem) that reproduce via spores and have neither seeds nor flowers. The polypodiophytes include all living pteridophytes except the lycopods, and differ from mosses and other bryophytes by being vascular, i.e., having specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients and in having life cycles in which the branched sporophyte is the dominant phase. Ferns have complex leaves called megaphylls, that are more complex than the microphylls of clubmosses. Most ferns are leptosporangiate ferns. They produce coiled fiddleheads that uncoil and expand into fronds. The group includes about 10,560 known extant species. Ferns are defined here in the broad sense, being all of the Polypodiopsida, comprising both the leptosporangiate ( Polypodiidae) and eusporangiate ferns, the latter group including horsetails, whisk ferns, marattioid ferns, and ophioglossoid fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monocotyledon
Monocotyledons (), commonly referred to as monocots, ( Lilianae ''sensu'' Chase & Reveal) are grass and grass-like flowering plants (angiosperms), the seeds of which typically contain only one embryonic leaf, or cotyledon. They constitute one of the major groups into which the flowering plants have traditionally been divided; the rest of the flowering plants have two cotyledons and are classified as dicotyledons, or dicots. Monocotyledons have almost always been recognized as a group, but with various taxonomic ranks and under several different names. The APG III system of 2009 recognises a clade called "monocots" but does not assign it to a taxonomic rank. The monocotyledons include about 60,000 species, about a quarter of all angiosperms. The largest family in this group (and in the flowering plants as a whole) by number of species are the orchids (family Orchidaceae), with more than 20,000 species. About half as many species belong to the true grasses ( Poaceae), which are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resurrection Plant
A resurrection plant is any poikilohydric plant that can survive extreme dehydration, even over months or years. Examples include: * ''Anastatica hierochuntica'', also known as the Rose of Jericho, a plant species native to deserts of North Africa * ''Asteriscus'' (plant); * '' Boea hygrometrica'', * ''Craterostigma'', members of the Linderniaceae/Scrophulariaceae with snapdragon-like flowers * ''Haberlea rhodopensis'' * '' Lichen'', a symbiosis that can survive in extreme desiccation, * '' Mesembryanthemum'', the plant can revive within a short period of time after a drought * '' Myrothamnus flabellifolius'', a plant species native to Southern Africa * ''Pleopeltis polypodioides'', also known as resurrection fern * '' Ramonda serbica'', a species in the family Gesneriaceae * ''Selaginella lepidophylla'', a plant species native to North America, Central and South America, and sold as a novelty * ''Tillandsia'' * '' Xerophyta'', a monocotyledonous genus typically occurring on rock ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flora Of Namibia
Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring ( indigenous) native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. 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 Thurma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
