Springbok
Town of the Northern Cape known its for proximity to mining.
Nodes
Trachypetrella
Fabaceae
Opuntia imbricata
Hermannia
Hermannia
Mesembryanthemaceae
Hermannia trifurca
Crassula namaquensis
Felicia
Pages
Taxonomy term
Bulbine
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La. bulbus = an onion or bulb. A misnomer in that the plants do not have a bulbous base.
Crassula
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La. crassus = thick; -ula = diminutive; referring to the fleshy succulent leaves.
Eriocephalus
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Gk. erion = wool; kephale = head. The fruiting capitula (fruiting heads) are woolly.
FABACEAE
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Faba, Latin, a bean.
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 This superseded the Parisian Encyclopedie of Diderot and d’Alembert published between 1751 and 1772.
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.
Lachenalia
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For Werner de Lachenal (1736–1800), Swiss professor of botany and anatomy at the University of Basel from 1776, eminent for his knowledge of European plants. He obtained his PhD in 1763. He was a pupil of Haller, who was one of his main correspondents, providing him with details of flora and their location around Basel, the Jura mountains, Alsat and Bruntrutain. He was a friend of Linnaeus. He authored several monographs in Acta Helvetica. While at the university he substantially improved its botanical garden, the oldest in Switzerland, that had fallen into disrepair. He continually strived to obtain funds to reconstruct and develop the garden and to pay for its gardener. He opened the garden to the public to cover expenditures.
Lessertia
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For Jules Paul Benjamin Delessert (1773–1847), French banker, industrialist, philanthropist and amateur botanist. After serving with the Paris National Guard from 1790–1793, where he became an artillery officer, he joined his father’s bank. A gifted and energetic entrepreneur, he started many commercial enterprises – a cotton factory in 1801 and a beet-sugar factory in 1802. He became regent of the Bank of France (1802) and introduced the idea of a savings bank in France (with Jean-Conrad Hottingerces) in 1818. He was an ardent botanist and conchologist with a notable herbarium and a botanical library of 30 000 volumes. He wrote several books and financed several exquisitely illustrated shell books. He was made a baron by Napoleon.
Melianthus
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Gk. meli, La. mel = honey; anthos = flower. The honey flowers ‘contain abundant nectar, but, judging by their stink, I would not expect edible honey! ‘Kruidjie-roer-my-nie’ (WPU Jackson).
Microloma
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Gk. mikros = very small; loma = edge or fringe; referring to the hairy corolla tube. The hairs are minute.
Nemesia
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Gk. nemesion, nemeseion from nemo = to distribute, to enjoy, to pasture, to feed; or nemos = wooded pasture, glade, a grove; name used by Dioscorides for a similar plant, referring to their habitat.
Opuntia imbricata
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From the Latin imbricatus meaning ‘overlapping / tiled’
Oxalis
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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.
Pelargonium
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Gk. pelargos = a stork; referring to the beak of the fruit which resembles a stork’s bill (cf Geranium, Erodium).