De Hoop and Potberg Nature Reserve
Adjacent and west of Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of Africa, lie two critical reserves. Both possess calcrete vegetation that is replete with endemic species. De Hoop is also near the mouth of a lagoon that is a sanctuary for many bird species.
Nodes
Felicia canaliculata
Brachysiphon mundii
Anginon pumilum
Stilbe ericoides
RUTACEAE
Untitled
Galium bredasdorpense
Galium bredasdorpense
Felicia
Pages
Taxonomy term
Erica bruniifolia
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From bruniifolia, bearing leaves like the genus Brunia
Eriocephalus paniculatus
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From the Latin paniculatus meaning 'tufted' or a 'panicle' referring to the form of the inflorescence
Euphorbia
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Gk. eu- = well; phorbe = pasture or fodder; probably after Euphorbus, Greek physician to Juba II, King of Mauretania. Juba was educated in Rome and married the daughter of Antony and Cleopatra. He was apparently interested in botany and had written about an African cactus-like plant from the slopes of Mount Atlas, which he had found or knew about, which was used as a powerful laxative. That plant may have been Euphorbia resinifera, and like all Euphorbias had a latexy exudate (milky emulsion from certain plants). Euphorbus had a brother named Antonius Musa who was the physician to Augustus Caesar in Rome. When Juba heard that Caesar had honoured his physician with a statue, he decided to honour his own physician by naming the plant he had written about after him.
Felicia
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Origin uncertain. La. felix = happy, cheerful, though in the neuter plural form felicia = happy things; possibly a reference to the bright flowers. Other sources vaguely refer to a mysterious German official in Regensburg called Felix who died in 1846 but speculatively and more probably for the Italian Fortunato Bartolomeo de Felice (1723–1789), an Italian scholar established in Yverdon who led the European team that wrote the Yverdon Encyclopedia, published between 1770 and 1780 in 58 quarto volumes. This superseded the Parisian Encyclopedie of Diderot and d’Alembert published between 1751 and 1772.
Felicia amoena
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From the Latin amoenus = ‘pleasing / pleasant’
Gazania krebsiana
(Rooigazania){"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
From the German ‘krebsiana’ / ‘Krebs’ meaning ‘commemorating a botanist of this name’
Greater Flamingo
(Greater Flamingo){"type":"FeatureCollection","features":[]}
Hermannia
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For Paul Hermann (1646–1695), German-born Dutch physician and botanist. He graduated in medicine at the universities of Leiden and Padua, became a ship’s medical officer (1672–1677) for the Dutch East India Company and went to Sri Lanka via the Cape, where he made the first known herbarium collection of local plants, now housed in the Sloane Herbarium, British Museum of Natural History and at Oxford. In 1679 he became professor of botany at the University of Leiden and director of the Hortus Botanicus in Leiden, Europe’s finest botanical garden. His 1687 publication Horti Academici Lugduno-Batavi Catalogus includes 34 Cape plants, and his proposed Prodomus Plantaerum Africanarum was to contain 791 items, but untimely death intervened.
Herniaria
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La. hernia = rupture; -aria = possessing, a thing like; alluding to the plant’s supposed property of curing hernia (i.e. rupture).
Hesperantha
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Gk. hesperos = evening; anthos = flower. Many flowers open late in the day, toward evening, Afrikaans aandblom = evening bloom/flower.
Indigofera
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Indigo is derived from the La. indicus, Gk. indikos, referring to India; La. ferax = bearing. Indigo is blue dye (cf I. tinctoria).
Ixia
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Ancient Gk. Ixia = a Linnaeus-derived name for a plant noted for the variability of its flower colour or Gk. ixos = mistletoe (viscum), birdlime; referring to the viscous sap (WPU Jackson).
Ixia micrandra
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From the Latin micrandra = 'small anthers'
Lachenalia juncifolia
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From the Latin juncus = 'rush' and folius = 'lleaves'
Ledebouria
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After Carl Friedrich van Ledebour (1785-1851), German professor of botany at Dorpat, worked in several European countries, wrote Flora Rossica.