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Guaiacum Officinale
''Guaiacum officinale'', commonly known as roughbark lignum-vitae, guaiacwood or gaïacwood, is a species of tree in the caltrop family, Zygophyllaceae, that is native to the Caribbean and the northern coast of South America. Description This small tree is very slow growing, reaching about in height with a trunk diameter of . The tree is essentially evergreen throughout most of its native range. The leaves are compound, in length, and wide. The blue flowers have five petals that yield a bright-yellow-orange fruit with red flesh and black seeds. Symbolism ''Guaiacum officinale'' is the national flower of Jamaica. Uses ''Guaiacum officinale'' is one of two species yielding the true lignum vitae, the other being '' Guaiacum sanctum''. Guaiac, a natural resin extracted from the wood, is a colorless compound that turns blue when placed in contact with substances that have peroxidase activity and then are exposed to hydrogen peroxide. Guaiac cards are impregnated with the re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as . Linnaeus was the son of a curate and was born in Råshult, in the countryside of Småland, southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his ' in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stool Guaiac Test
The stool guaiac test or guaiac fecal occult blood test (gFOBT) is one of several methods that detects the presence of fecal occult blood (blood invisible in the feces). The test involves placing a fecal sample on guaiac paper (containing a phenolic compound, alpha-guaiaconic acid, extracted from the wood resin of guaiacum trees) and applying hydrogen peroxide which, in the presence of blood, yields a blue reaction product within seconds. The American College of Gastroenterology has recommended the abandoning of gFOBT testing as a colorectal cancer screening tool, in favor of the fecal immunochemical test (FIT). Though the FIT is preferred, even the guaiac FOB testing of average risk populations may have been sufficient to reduce the mortality associated with colon cancer by about 25%. With this lower efficacy, it was not always cost effective to screen a large population with gFOBT. Methodology The stool guaiac test involves fasting from iron supplements, red meat (the blood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plants Described In 1753
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 o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Symbols Of Jamaica
Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the island containing Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and southeast of the Cayman Islands (a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory). With million people, Jamaica is the third most populous English-speaking world, Anglophone country in the Americas and the fourth most populous country in the Caribbean. Kingston, Jamaica, Kingston is the country's capital and largest city. The indigenous Taíno peoples of the island gradually came under Spanish Empire, Spanish rule after the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1494. Many of the indigenous people either were killed or died of diseases, after which the Spanish brought large numbers of Africans to Jamaica as slaves. The island remained a possession of Spain, under the name Colo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flora Of Southern America
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'' for purposes of specificity. 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 communi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guaiacum
''Guaiacum'' (''OED'' 2nd edition, 1989.Entry "guaiacum" in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary ', retrieved 2013-04-30.), sometimes spelled ''Guajacum'', is a of s in the family |
CITES
CITES (shorter acronym for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention) is a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals from the threats of international trade. It was drafted as a result of a resolution adopted in 1963 at a meeting of members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The convention was opened for signature in 1973 and CITES entered into force on 1 July 1975. Its aim is to ensure that international trade (import/export) in specimens of animals and plants included under CITES does not threaten the survival of the species in the wild. This is achieved via a system of permits and certificates. CITES affords varying degrees of protection to more than 40,900 species. , the Secretary-General of CITES is Ivonne Higuero. Background CITES is one of the largest and oldest conservation and sustainable use agreements in existence. There are three workin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endangered Species
An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, invasive species, and climate change. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List lists the global conservation status of many species, and various other agencies assess the status of species within particular areas. Many nations have laws that protect conservation-reliant species which, for example, forbid hunting, restrict land development, or create protected areas. Some endangered species are the target of extensive conservation efforts such as captive breeding and habitat restoration. Human activity is a significant cause in causing some species to become endangered. Conservation status The conservation status of a species indicates the likelihood that it will become extinct. Multiple factors are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guaiacum Sanctum
''Guaiacum sanctum'', commonly known as holywood, lignum vitae or holywood lignum-vitae, is a species of flowering plant in the Larrea tridentata, creosote bush family, Zygophyllaceae. It is native to the Neotropical realm, from Mexico through Central America, Florida in the United States, the Caribbean, and northern South America. It has been introduced to other tropical areas of the world. It is currently threatened by habitat loss in its native region, and as such, is currently rated near threatened on the IUCN Red List. ''Guaiacum sanctum'' is the National emblem, national tree of the Bahamas. Etymology The native Taíno of the Caribbean referred to the tree as guayacán. The common English name is a direct translation of the Spanish "palo santo" (not to be confused with ''Bursera graveolens''). Francisco López de Gómara as well as Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Oviedo make reference to the specific species as such in their respective histories of the New World. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tribulus Terrestris
''Tribulus terrestris'' is an annual plant in the caltrop family (Zygophyllaceae) widely distributed around the world. It is adapted to thrive in dry climate locations in which few other plants can survive. It is native to warm temperate and tropical regions in southern Eurasia and Africa. It has been unintentionally introduced to North America and Australia. An aggressive and hardy invasive species, ''T. terrestris'' is widely known as a noxious weed because of its small woody fruit – the bur – having long sharp and strong spines which easily penetrate surfaces, such as bare feet or thin shoes of crop workers and other pedestrians, the rubber of bicycle tires, and the mouths and skin of grazing animals. Names Like many weedy species, this plant has numerous common names according to the world region, including 3-corner-jack, goathead, bull's head, gopher-head, caltrop, cat-head, devil's eyelashes, devil's-thorn, devil's-weed, puncturevine, and tackweed. Vernacula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lignum Vitae
Lignum vitae (), also called guayacan or guaiacum, and in parts of Europe known as Pockholz or pokhout, is a wood from trees of the genus '' Guaiacum''. The trees are indigenous to the Caribbean and the northern coast of South America (e.g., Colombia and Venezuela) and have been an important export crop to Europe since the beginning of the 16th century. The wood was once very important for applications requiring a material with its extraordinary combination of strength, toughness, and density. It is also the national tree of the Bahamas, and the Jamaican national flower. The wood is obtained chiefly from '' Guaiacum officinale'' and '' Guaiacum sanctum'', both small, slow-growing trees. All species of the genus ''Guaiacum'' are now listed in Appendix II of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) as potentially endangered species. ''G. sanctum'' is listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List. Demand for the wood has been re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
