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Tembusu Virus
The tembusu (, or ), is a large evergreen tree in the family Gentianaceae, native to Southeast Asia (from Indo-China to New Guinea). It is the Malay name for ''Cyrtophyllum fragrans'' (synonym ''Fagraea fragrans''). It is also known as ironwood. Its trunk is dark brown, with deeply fissured bark, looking somewhat like a bittergourd. The tree grows in an irregular shape from 10 to 25 metres high, with light green oval-shaped leaves, and yellowish flowers with a distinct fragrance. The fruits of the tree are bitter tasting red berries, which are eaten by ''Pteropus'' fruit bats. Uses The trunk of this tree can produce very hard wood that can be used to make chopping boards and floors. The wood can last over a hundred years, as it is not consumed by termites and weevils. Cultural significance A distinctive and well-loved tembusu tree growing in the Singapore Botanic Gardens is pictured on the Singaporean five-dollar bill The Singapore dollar (currency sign, sign: S$; ISO ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singapore Botanic Gardens
The Singapore Botanic Gardens is a -year-old tropical garden located at the fringe of the Orchard Road shopping district in Singapore. It is one of three gardens, and the only tropical garden, to be honoured as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Botanic Gardens has been ranked Asia's top park attraction since 2013, by TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards. It was declared the inaugural Garden of the Year by the International Garden Tourism Awards in 2012. The Botanic Gardens was founded at its present site in 1859 by the Agri-horticultural Society. It played a pivotal role in the region's rubber trade boom in the early twentieth century when its first scientific director, Henry Nicholas Ridley, headed research into the plant's cultivation. By perfecting the technique of rubber extraction, which is still in use today, and promoting its economic value to planters in the region, rubber output expanded rapidly. At its height in the 1920s, the Malayan peninsula cornered half of the g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pteropus
''Pteropus'' (suborder Yinpterochiroptera) is a genus of megabats which are among the largest bats in the world. They are commonly known as fruit bats or flying foxes, among other colloquial names. They live in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, East Africa, and some oceanic islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. There are at least 60 extant species in the genus. Flying foxes eat fruit and other plant matter, and occasionally consume insects as well. They locate resources with their keen sense of smell. Most, but not all, are nocturnal. They navigate with keen eyesight, as they cannot echolocate. They have long life spans and low reproductive outputs, with females of most species producing only one offspring per year. Their slow life history makes their populations vulnerable to threats such as overhunting, culling, and natural disasters. Six flying fox species have been made extinct in modern times by overhunting. Flying foxes are often persecuted for their real or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flora Of Malesia
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 community) wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fagraea
''Fagraea'' is a genus of plants in the family Gentianaceae.Backlund, M., et al. (2000)Phylogenetic relationships within the Gentianales based on NDHF and RBCL sequences, with particular reference to the Loganiaceae.''American Journal of Botany'' 87 1029-43. It includes trees, shrubs, lianas, and epiphytes. They can be found in forests, swamps, and other habitat in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands, with the center of diversity in Malesia.Motley, T. J. (2004)The ethnobotany of ''Fagraea'' Thunb.(Gentianaceae): The timber of Malesia and the scent of Polynesia.''Economic Botany'' 58(3) 396-409. Many ''Fagraea'' species have a variety of human uses, particularly the wood and flowers. The flowers open in the evening and are often fragrant and bat-pollinated. They are so conspicuous they have roles in Polynesian mythology. They make the trees attractive as ornamental plantings. Some are used in leis. '' Fagraea auriculata'' produces a flower over 30 centimeters wide, one of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aidia Cochinchinensis
''Aidia cochinchinensis'' is the type species of the genus '' Aidia,'' in the family Rubiaceae. ''Aidia cochinchinensis'' is native to south-central China, including Hainan, and Vietnam. No subspecies are listed in the Catalogue of Life The Catalogue of Life (CoL) is an online database that provides an index of known species of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms. It was created in 2001 as a partnership between the global Species 2000 and the American Integrated Taxono .... ''Aidia cochinchinensis'' has commonly been reported in the Pacific Islands, although Tirvengadum noted that the specimens from the Pacific islands were distinct from ''Aidia cochinchinensis'' in Vietnam and in 1983 proposed '' Aidia racemosa'' as a unique species in the Pacific. Plants of the World Online (POWO) follows Tirvengadum in identifying the ''Aidia'' of the Pacific region, including Australia and Pacific Islands, as ''A. racemosa''. References de Loureiro J (1790) In: ''Fl. Coch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Singaporean Five-dollar Bill
The Singapore dollar (currency sign, sign: S$; ISO 4217, code: SGD) is the official currency of the Singapore, Republic of Singapore. It is divided into 100 cent (currency), cents (, , ). It is normally abbreviated with the dollar sign $, or S$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issues the banknotes and coins of the Singapore dollar. As of 2024, the Singapore dollar is the 13th most traded currency in the world. Apart from its use in Singapore, the Singapore dollar is also accepted as customary tender in Brunei according to the Currency Interchangeability Agreement between the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Brunei Darussalam Central Bank, Autoriti Monetari Brunei Darussalam (Monetary Authority of Brunei Darussalam). Likewise, the Brunei dollar is also customarily accepted in Singapore. History The Spanish dollar, Spanish-American silver dollar brought over by the Manila galleons was in wide circulati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weevil
Weevils are beetles belonging to the superfamily Curculionoidea, known for their elongated snouts. They are usually small – less than in length – and herbivorous. Approximately 97,000 species of weevils are known. They belong to several families, with most of them in the family Curculionidae (the true weevils). It also includes bark beetles, which while morphologically dissimilar to other weevils in lacking the distinctive snout, is a subfamily of Curculionidae. Some other beetles, although not closely related, bear the name "weevil", such as the leaf beetle subfamily Bruchinae, known as "bean weevils", or the biscuit weevil (''Stegobium paniceum''), which belongs to the family Ptinidae. Many weevils are considered pests because of their ability to damage and kill crops. The grain or wheat weevil (''Sitophilus granarius'') damages stored grain, as does the maize weevil (''Sitophilus zeamais''), among others. The boll weevil (''Anthonomus grandis'') attacks cotton crop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Termite
Termites are a group of detritivore, detritophagous Eusociality, eusocial cockroaches which consume a variety of Detritus, decaying plant material, generally in the form of wood, Plant litter, leaf litter, and Humus, soil humus. They are distinguished by their moniliform antennae and the soft-bodied, unpigmented worker caste for which they have been commonly termed "white ants"; however, they are not ants but highly Apomorphy and synapomorphy, derived cockroaches. About 2,997 extant species are currently described, 2,125 of which are members of the family Termitidae. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the Taxonomic rank#All ranks, epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattodea (the cockroaches). Termites were once classified in a separate Order (biology), order from cockroaches, but recent phylogenetic studies indicate that they evolved from cockroaches, as they are deeply nested within the group, and the sister group to wood-eating cockroaches of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chopping Board
Chopping may refer to: * Chopping (astronomy), an instrumental technique to remove the background * Chopping (sampling technique), a hip-hop sampling method. * Chopping (violin), rapid tapping with the bow, used in jazz * Chopping the blinds, in poker, when all players fold except the small and big blind, who take back their bets * Virtual tuning, also called chopping, graphical modification of images of automobiles with software See also * Chop (other) {{disambiguation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bittergourd
''Momordica charantia'' (commonly called bitter melon, cerassee, goya, bitter apple, bitter gourd, bitter squash, balsam-pear, karela, karavila and many more names listed below) is a tropical and subtropical vine of the family Cucurbitaceae, widely grown in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean for its edible fruit. Its many varieties differ substantially in the shape and bitterness of the fruit. Bitter melon originated in Africa, where it was a dry-season staple food of ǃKung hunter-gatherers. Wild or semi-domesticated variants spread across Asia in prehistory, and it was likely fully domesticated in Southeast Asia. It is widely used in the cuisines of East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Description This herbaceous, tendril-bearing vine grows up to in length. It bears simple, alternate leaves across, with three to seven deeply separated lobes. Each plant bears separate yellow male and female flowers. In the Northern Hemisphere, flowering occurs from June to July, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Roxburgh
William Roxburgh FRSE FRCPE Linnean Society of London, FLS (3/29 June 1751 – 18 February 1815) was a Scottish people, Scottish surgeon and botanist who worked extensively in India, describing species and working on economic botany. He is known as the founding father of Indian botany. He published numerous works on Indian botany, illustrated by careful drawings made by Indian artists and accompanied by taxonomic descriptions of many plant species. Apart from the numerous species that he named, many species were named in his honour by his collaborators. He was the first to document the existence of the Ganges river dolphin. Early life He was born on 3 June 1751 on the Underwood estate near Craigie, South Ayrshire, Craigie in Ayrshire and christened on 29 June 1751 at the nearby church at Symington, South Ayrshire, Symington. His father may have worked in the Underwood estate or he may have been the illegitimate son of a well-connected family. His early education was at Underwood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
