Western Cape
Nodes
Gladiolus pulcherrimus
Gladiolus
Gladiolus watermeyeri
Gladiolus orchidiflorus
Gladiolus watsonius
Gladiolus trichonemifolius
Gladiolus meliusculus
Gladiolus venustus
Gladiolus scullyi
Pages
Taxonomy term
Erodium
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Gk. erodios = a heron; -odes, odium = resembling; referring to the long beak on the fruit, the seed pod of which resembles the head and long beak of a heron.
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.
Ferraria
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For Giovanni Batista Ferrari (1584–1655), Italian Jesuit, professor of Hebrew and rhetoric at the Jesuit College in Rome, horticultural advisor to the Pope, and author of many illustrated botanical books, including De Florum Cultura in four volumes (1633), a horticultural book emphasising the planning and planting of gardens, and Hesperides sive de Malorum Aureorum cultura (1646), a ‘citrus encyclopedia’. He also wrote a Latin-Syrian dictionary, a series of Orations – treatises on rhetoric, which emphasised good Latin usage, and a book on Sienese saints. He was the first scientist to provide a complete description of the limes, lemons and pomegranates, and their use in preventing scurvy.
Geissorhiza
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Gk. geisson = title; rhiza = root; alluding to the regular overlapping of the corm tunics in some species.
Geissorhiza
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Gk. geisson = title; rhiza = root; alluding to the regular overlapping of the corm tunics in some species.
Gladiolus
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La. gladiolus = a small sword; referring to the sword-like shape of the leaves.
Gladiolus permeabilis
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From the Latin permeabilis = ';able to pass through' in reference to the gaps between the side tepals and the upper tepal
Haemanthus
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Gk. haima = blood; anthos = flower. The colour of the (flower) perianth is red in many species.
Hedera
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The classical name for ivy, possibly from Celtic hedra = a cord; alluding to the vining habit. The ivy leaf was also associated with Bacchus, the Greek and Roman god of wine.
Heliophila
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Gk. (h)elios = sun; philein = to love. The plant likes a sunny position.
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.
Hermannia cuneifolia
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From the Latin cuneus = 'wedge' and folius = 'leaf'; referring to the shape of the leaf with a narrow base and wide apex
Roughly scaly, twiggy shrub to 1 m. Leaves cuneate, coarsely toothed above, sometimes appearing fascicled. Flowers on subsecund racemes, yellow often fading reddish. Mainly Aug.--Oct. Clay and granitic slopes, NW, SW, KM, AP, LB, SE (Namaqualand to E Cape and Lesotho).
Hesperantha
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Gk. hesperos = evening; anthos = flower. Many flowers open late in the day, toward evening, Afrikaans aandblom = evening bloom/flower.
Ipomoea indica
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From the Latin indicus = ‘relating to India’
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).