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Roridula Dentata
''Roridula dentata'' is a protocarnivorous plant native to the Western Cape province of South Africa. It can be found only in South Africa, in the hotter and more arid inland mountains of Clanwilliam, Tulbagh and Ceres, and can grow up to more than 150 cm. The leaves are covered with sticky hairs and produce a resin (rather than a mucilage as in most other sticky carnivorous plants), enabling it to catch insects, such as wasps or bees, and very occasionally small birds. McPherson, Stewart. 2008. ''Glistening Carnivores: the Sticky-leaved Insect-eating Plants''. Poole, Dorset, England: Redfern Natural History Productions. It benefits indirectly from catching prey, as several species of '' Pameridea'' are unaffected by the stickiness of the leaves. ''R. dentata'' then absorbs the nitrogen from the droppings of the insects, resulting in an obligate mutualistic relationship. This relationship is effectively indirect carnivory, which some believe is enough to classify ''R. den ...
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Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as and, after his 1761 ennoblement, as . Linnaeus was born in Råshult, the countryside of Småland, in 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 continued to coll ...
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Roridula Gorgonias
''Roridula gorgonias'' is an evergreen, shyly branching, upright shrub of up to about 1 m (3 ft) high, from the family Roridulaceae. It has awl-shaped leaves with entire margins, crowded at the tip of the branches. These are set with tentacles that secrete a sticky, shiny resin from the thicker Gland (botany), gland at their tips, that catch many airborne items. At the center of the shoots appear inflorescences between July to October that consist of up to twelve flowers in Spike (botany), spikes, each on a short Pedicel (botany), flower stalk, with a bract at its base. The Merosity, 5-merous flower is about 2½ cm (1 in) in diameter and has pinkish purple or white petals. The plants do not digest the trapped insects, but the bug ''Pameridea roridulae'' sucks out their juices and the plant absorbs nutrients from the bug's droppings. It is therefore considered a protocarnivorous plant. It is called Gorgons dewstick, fly bush or fly catcher bush in English and vliebos, ...
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Protocarnivorous Plant
A protocarnivorous plant (sometimes also paracarnivorous, subcarnivorous, or borderline carnivore), according to some definitions, traps and kills insects or other animals but lacks the ability to either directly digest or absorb nutrients from its prey like a carnivorous plant. The morphological adaptations such as sticky trichomes or pitfall traps of protocarnivorous plants parallel the trap structures of confirmed carnivorous plants. Some authors prefer the term "protocarnivorous" because it implies that these plants are on the evolutionary path to true carnivory, whereas others oppose the term for the same reason. The same problem arises with "subcarnivorous". Donald Schnell, author of the book ''Carnivorous Plants of the United States and Canada'', prefers the term "paracarnivorous" for a less rigid definition of carnivory that can include many of the possible carnivorous plants.Schnell, 2002 The demarcation between carnivorous and protocarnivorous is blurred by the lack of ...
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Western Cape
The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020. About two-thirds of these inhabitants live in the metropolitan area of Cape Town, which is also the provincial capital. The Western Cape was created in 1994 from part of the former Cape Province. The two largest cities are Cape Town and George. Geography The Western Cape Province is roughly L-shaped, extending north and east from the Cape of Good Hope, in the southwestern corner of South Africa. It stretches about northwards along the Atlantic coast and about eastwards along the South African south coast ( Southern Indian Ocean). It is bordered on the north by the Northern Cape and on the east by the Eastern Cape. The total land area of the province is , about 10.6% of the country's total. It is roughly the size of England or th ...
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South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini. It also completely enclaves the country Lesotho. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World, and the second-most populous country located entirely south of the equator, after Tanzania. South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot, with unique biomes, plant and animal life. With over 60 million people, the country is the world's 24th-most populous nation and covers an area of . South Africa has three capital cities, with the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government based in Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and Cape Town respectively. The largest city is Johannesburg. About 80% of the population are Black Sou ...
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Clanwilliam, Western Cape
Clanwilliam is a town in the Olifants River valley in the Western Cape, South Africa, about north of Cape Town. It is located in, and the seat of, the Cederberg Local Municipality. Clanwilliam had a population of 7,674. Geography John Cradock, the Governor of the Cape Colony (1811–1814), named the town after his father-in-law, The 1st Earl of Clanwilliam, an Anglo-Irish nobleman. Clanwilliam is situated at an elevation of , between the western slopes of the Cederberg mountains and the east bank of the Olifants River, which is impounded there by the Clanwilliam Dam. It is located just off the N7 national road, which runs from Cape Town to the Namibian border, and on the R364 road, which runs from Lamberts Bay to Calvinia. Clanwilliam is from Cape Town by road. The Dutch Reform Church has been a scheduled national monument since 1973. The mission there used to run a school where Harold Cressy once taught whilst studying to become the first coloured man to gain a degre ...
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Tulbagh
Tulbagh, named after Dutch Cape Colony Governor Ryk Tulbagh, is a town located in the "Land van Waveren" mountain basin (also known as the Tulbagh basin), in the Winelands of the Western Cape, South Africa. The basin is fringed on three sides by mountains, and is drained by the Klein Berg River and its tributaries. The nearest towns are Ons Rust and Gouda beyond the Nuwekloof Pass, Wolseley some to the south inside the basin, and Ceres and Prince Alfred Hamlet beyond Michell's Pass in the Warm Bokkeveld. History The basin has been inhabited for thousands of years by indigenous Bushmen and Khoi-San peoples. It was about 300 years ago when, after a land grant by the Dutch Colonial Government to a more or less equal number of Dutch and Huguenot settlers to settle the area, that the town of Tulbagh was founded. The region was named "Land van Waveren" in 1699 by Willem Adriaan van der Stel in honour of the Oetgens van Waveren family, from which his mother was descended. Bef ...
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Ceres, Western Cape
Ceres is the administrative centre and largest town of the Witzenberg Local Municipality in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. Ceres serves as a regional centre for the surrounding towns of Wolseley, Tulbagh, Op-die-Berg and Prince Alfred Hamlet. It is situated in the ''Warmbokkeveld'' (Afrikaans: "warm antelope field") Valley about 170 km north-east of Cape Town. Ceres is located at the north-eastern entrance to Michell's Pass and was the old route north between Cape Town and Johannesburg, which was later replaced by the N1 highway, which traverses the Breede River Valley to the south. Named after the Roman goddess of agriculture, Ceres, a name which is fitting as the valley in which the town is situated is extremely fertile and is a major producer of South Africa's deciduous fruit. Geography and climate Ceres experiences a typical Mediterranean climate tempered by its altitude. The town experiences warmer temperatures in summer, due to its inland location w ...
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Resin
In polymer chemistry and materials science, resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant or synthetic origin that is typically convertible into polymers. Resins are usually mixtures of organic compounds. This article focuses on naturally occurring resins. Plants secrete resins for their protective benefits in response to injury. The resin protects the plant from insects and pathogens. Resins confound a wide range of herbivores, insects, and pathogens, while the volatile phenolic compounds may attract benefactors such as parasitoids or predators of the herbivores that attack the plant. Composition Most plant resins are composed of terpenes. Specific components are alpha-pinene, beta-pinene, delta-3 carene, and sabinene, the monocyclic terpenes limonene and terpinolene, and smaller amounts of the tricyclic sesquiterpenes, longifolene, caryophyllene, and delta-cadinene. Some resins also contain a high proportion of resin acids. Rosins on the other hand ...
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Mucilage
Mucilage is a thick, gluey substance produced by nearly all plants and some microorganisms. These microorganisms include protists which use it for their locomotion. The direction of their movement is always opposite to that of the secretion of mucilage. It is a polar glycoprotein and an exopolysaccharide. Mucilage in plants plays a role in the storage of water and food, seed germination, and thickening membranes. Cacti (and other succulents) and flax seeds are especially rich sources of mucilage. Occurrence Exopolysaccharides are the most stabilising factor for microaggregates and are widely distributed in soils. Therefore, exopolysaccharide-producing "soil algae" play a vital role in the ecology of the world's soils. The substance covers the outside of, for example, unicellular or filamentous green algae and cyanobacteria. Amongst the green algae especially, the group Volvocales are known to produce exopolysaccharides at a certain point in their life cycle. It occurs ...
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Stewart McPherson (geographer)
Stewart Robin McPherson (born May 1983) is a British geographer, field biologist, nature photographer, and writer.McPherson, S.R. 2009. ''Pitcher Plants of the Old World''. Redfern Natural History Productions, Poole. Background Born May 1983, McPherson graduated in geography at the University of Durham in England, and studied briefly at the University of Tübingen in Germany, and Yale University in the United States. On graduation in 2006 he founded Redfern Natural History Productions in Poole, Dorset to conduct natural history research, publishing, filming and eco-tours. Career Work in natural history McPherson is the author of around 20 volumes published by his own company and concerned with natural history, largely focusing on carnivorous plants. He has co-discovered a number of species (including the much publicised '' Nepenthes attenboroughii'') and has formally described around 35 carnivorous plant taxa. He is a member of the IUCN SSC Carnivorous Plant Specialis ...
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Pameridea
''Pameridea'' is a genus of insects comprising two species, ''P. roridulae'' and ''P. marlothii'', that live in symbiotic relationships with carnivorous plants in the genus '' Roridula''. ''Pameridea marlothii'' only occurs on ''R. dentata'', while ''P. roridulae'' exists on both ''R. dentata'' and ''R. gorgonias''. Life cycle ''Pameridea roridulae'' can only live on ''Roridula'', where it feeds on insects that the plant captures with its resin-tipped trichomes.Voigt, D. and Gorb S. (2008) An insect trap as habitat: cohesion-failure mechanism prevents adhesion of ''Pameridea roridulae'' bugs to the sticky surface of the plant ''Roridula gorgonias''. The Journal of Experimental Biology 211, 2647-2657. After devouring the captured arthropods, bugs in the genus excrete waste, which the plant absorbs using glands, making it an example of symbiosis. ''Pameridea'' also mates while on the plant, and hatchlings continue to live on the ''Roridula'' plant. Conservation status Since i ...
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