Addo PPC Trail-start
Botanizing
Nodes
Hyacinthoides
Gasteria
Pelargonium peltatum
Pelargonium
Senecio radicans
Gethyllis verticillata
Nerine humilis
Pages
Taxonomy term
Jamesbrittenia
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
For James Britten (1846–1924), who was born in London and lived there his entire life. He was educated privately with the intention of becoming a medical doctor but favoured botany and accepted a position as an assistant at the Kew Gardens herbarium from 1869–1871. He was subsequently transferred to the botany department at the British Museum and worked there until his retirement in 1909. Britten published a number of dictionaries of British plants and botanists but was also an expert on Old English dialects and folklore and a devout Catholic who devoted time to social upliftment projects. He was evidently much admired by Otto Kuntze, who named Jamesbrittenia for him, as a strong upholder of the Principle of Priority in plant nomenclature and as a longtime editor of the Journal of Botany, a post he filled for 45 years.
Nerine
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
For Nerine, in Greek mythology a sea-nymph or nereid, daughter of Doris and Nereus, and granddaughter of Oceanus and Tethys. The Nereids were meant to protect sailors and their ships. Common name ‘Guernsey lily’. In 1820, William Herbert named this indigenous South African plant Nerine (previously Imhofia), when a ship carrying boxes of the bulbs of this species was shipwrecked on Guernsey. The boxes were washed ashore, and flowers grew around the coast, hence the common name.
Olea capensis
(Ysterhout){"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
From the Cape Province of South Africa, previously known as the Cape Colony. -ensis is a Latin adjectival suffix meaning “pertaining to or “originating in,” Thus these organisms were first discovered in the Cape. In the early days of exploration this epithet was frequently applied to anywhere in South Africa or even Southern Africa
Oxalis
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
From the Greek oxys = sharp, sour or acid and (h)als = salt. The plant is frequently consumed for its sour taste caused by the oxalic acid, particularly the flowering stalks of O. pes-caprae. In large quantities the oxalic acid inhibits digestion and in stock leads to the condition 'dikpens' or bloated belly.
Oxalis copiosa
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
From the Latin copiosus = 'abundant'
Pelargonium
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
Gk. pelargos = a stork; referring to the beak of the fruit which resembles a stork’s bill (cf Geranium, Erodium).
Protea
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
Gk. After Proteus, a mythological sea-god, who could change his form at will, taking new shapes. Seemingly Linnaeus was so over-awed by the variety of plants sent to him from the Cape that he named the genus Protea. The authors could not confirm this.
Sarcostemma viminale
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
Schotia afra
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
From the Latin afra / africanus meaning ‘relating to Africa’
Tritoniopsis
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
Tritonia (q.v.); Gk. -iopsis = resembling.
Watsonia
{"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
For William Watson (1715–1787), English physician, apothecary, botanist and naturalist. He introduced the work of Linnaeus and his botanical classification system to Britain. He was the first scientist to observe the flash of light from the discharge of a Leyden jar and to show that electricity could pass through a vacuum and that it had a positive and negative charge; he coined the word ‘circuit’. His articles, entitled Experiments on the Nature of Electricity, appeared from 1745 onward in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, of which he became a member (1741) and vice president (1772). Both he and Benjamin Franklin discovered some of the same characteristics of electricity at the same time, but independently. The two men became friends.