Lamiales
The Lamiales are an order in the asterid group of dicotyledonous flowering plants. It includes about 23,810 species, 1,059 genera, is divided into about 24 families. Well-known or economically important members of this order include lavender, olive, the ash tree, snapdragon, psyllium, garden sage, a number of table herbs such as mint and rosemary. Although exceptions occur, species in this order have the following characteristics: superior ovary composed of two fused carpels four petals fused into a tube bilaterally symmetrical bilabiate corollas four fertile stamens opposite leaves The Lamiales had a restricted circumscription that included the major families Lamiaceae and Boraginaceae, plus a few smaller families. In the classification system of Dahlgren the Lamiales were in the superorder Lamiiflorae. Recent phylogenetic work has shown the Lamiales are polyphyletic with respect to order Scrophulariales and the two groups are now combined in a single order that includes the former orders Hippuridales and Plantaginales.
Lamiales has become the preferred name for this much larger combined group. The placement of the Boraginaceae is unclear, but phylogenetic work shows this family does not belong in Lamiales; the circumscription of family Scrophulariaceae a paraphyletic group defined by plesiomorphic characters and from within which numerous other families of the Lamiales were derived, has been radically altered to create a number of smaller, better-defined, putatively monophyletic families. Much research has been conducted in recent years regarding the dating the Lamiales lineage, although there still remains some ambiguity. A 2004 study, on the molecular phylogenetic dating of asterid flowering plants, estimated 106 million years for the stem lineage of Lamiales. A 2009 study on angiosperm diversification through time, concluded an inferred age of lower Eocene, ca. 50 MY, for Lamiales. Lamiales A parsimony analysis of the Asteridae sensu lato based on rbcL sequences Disintegration of the Scrophulariaceae L. Watson and M.
J. Dallwitz; the families of flowering plants: descriptions, identification, information retrieval. Http://delta-intkey.com http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/vascular/acanth.htm 2002-09-06 http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/d52/52e.htm 2002-09-06 http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/d52/52efam.htm 2002-09-06 http://www.science.siu.edu/parasitic-plants/Relation-Scroph.html http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/web.dbs/genlist.html 2002-09-06
Acanthus ebracteatus
Acanthus ebracteatus is a species of shrubby herb that grows in the undergrowth of mangroves of south-east Asia. Common names include sea holly mangrove, it grows as an erect, spreading or scrambling shrubby herb, up to 1.5 metres tall with a great many stems. Its leaves are dark green, with sharp spines at the end of each deep lobe: much like those of holly. Flowers are blue, purple or white, occur in spikes terminal on the branches; the fruit is a square-shaped capsule, which explodes when ripe, projecting the seeds up to two metres from the plant. Seeds are flat; this species was first described by Martin Vahl in his 1791 Symbolae Botanicae. In 1806 Christiaan Persoon transferred it into Dilivaria. Two subspecies are recognised, the autonym A. ebracteatus subsp. Ebracteatus, A. ebracteatus subsp. Ebarbatus, described in 1986, it occurs in the undergrowth including northern Australia. The leaves of Acanthus ebracteatus, noted for their antioxidant properties, are used for making Thai herbal tea in Thailand and Indonesia.
"Acanthus ebracteatus Vahl". FloraBase. Western Australian Government Department of Parks and Wildlife. "Acanthus ebracteatus Vahl". Australian Plant Name Index, IBIS database. Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research, Australian Government. Http://mangrove.nus.edu.sg/guidebooks/text/1045.htm "Acanthus ebracteatus Vahl". Atlas of Living Australia
Butterfly
Butterflies are insects in the macrolepidopteran clade Rhopalocera from the order Lepidoptera, which includes moths. Adult butterflies have large brightly coloured wings, conspicuous, fluttering flight; the group comprises the large superfamily Papilionoidea, which contains at least one former group, the skippers, the most recent analyses suggest it contains the moth-butterflies. Butterfly fossils date to the Paleocene, about 56 million years ago. Butterflies have the typical four-stage insect life cycle. Winged adults lay eggs on the food plant; the caterpillars grow, sometimes rapidly, when developed, pupate in a chrysalis. When metamorphosis is complete, the pupal skin splits, the adult insect climbs out, after its wings have expanded and dried, it flies off; some butterflies in the tropics, have several generations in a year, while others have a single generation, a few in cold locations may take several years to pass through their entire life cycle. Butterflies are polymorphic, many species make use of camouflage and aposematism to evade their predators.
Some, like the monarch and the painted lady, migrate over long distances. Many butterflies are attacked by parasites or parasitoids, including wasps, protozoans and other invertebrates, or are preyed upon by other organisms; some species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic trees. Larvae of a few butterflies eat harmful insects, a few are predators of ants, while others live as mutualists in association with ants. Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the literary arts; the Oxford English Dictionary derives the word straightforwardly from Old English butorflēoge, butter-fly. A possible source of the name is the bright yellow male of the brimstone; the earliest Lepidoptera fossils are of a small moth, Archaeolepis mane, of Jurassic age, around 190 million years ago. Butterflies evolved from moths, so while the butterflies are monophyletic, the moths are not; the oldest butterflies are from the Palaeocene MoClay or Fur Formation of Denmark 55 million years old.
The oldest American butterfly is the Late Eocene Prodryas persephone from the Florissant Fossil Beds 34 million years old. Traditionally, the butterflies have been divided into the superfamily Papilionoidea excluding the smaller groups of the Hesperiidae and the more moth-like Hedylidae of America. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the traditional Papilionoidea is paraphyletic with respect to the other two groups, so they should both be included within Papilionoidea, to form a single butterfly group, thereby synonymous with the clade Rhopalocera. Butterfly adults are characterized by their four scale-covered wings, which give the Lepidoptera their name; these scales give butterfly wings their colour: they are pigmented with melanins that give them blacks and browns, as well as uric acid derivatives and flavones that give them yellows, but many of the blues, greens and iridescent colours are created by structural coloration produced by the micro-structures of the scales and hairs. As in all insects, the body is divided into three sections: the head and abdomen.
The thorax is composed of each with a pair of legs. In most families of butterfly the antennae are clubbed, unlike those of moths which may be threadlike or feathery; the long proboscis can be coiled. Nearly all butterflies are diurnal, have bright colours, hold their wings vertically above their bodies when at rest, unlike the majority of moths which fly by night, are cryptically coloured, either hold their wings flat or fold them over their bodies; some day-flying moths, such as the hummingbird hawk-moth, are exceptions to these rules. Butterfly larvae, have a hard head with strong mandibles used for cutting their food, most leaves, they have cylindrical bodies, with ten segments to the abdomen with short prolegs on segments 3–6 and 10. Many are well camouflaged; the pupa or chrysalis, unlike that of moths, is not wrapped in a cocoon. Many butterflies are sexually dimorphic. Most butterflies have the ZW sex-determination system where females are the heterogametic sex and males homogametic. Butterflies are distributed worldwide except Antarctica.
Of these, 775 are Nearctic. The monarch butterfly is native to the Americas, but in the nineteenth century or before, spread across the world, is now found in Australia, New Zealand, other parts of Oceania, the Iberian Peninsula, it is not clear.
Acanthus (ornament)
The acanthus is one of the most common plant forms to make foliage ornament and decoration. In architecture, an ornament may be carved into stone or wood to resemble leaves from the Mediterranean species of the Acanthus genus of plants, which have cut leaves with some similarity to those of the thistle and poppy. Both Acanthus mollis and the still more cut Acanthus spinosus have been claimed as the main model, particular examples of the motif may be closer in form to one or the other species; the motif is found in decoration in nearly every medium. The relationship between acanthus ornament and the acanthus plant has been the subject of a long-standing controversy. Alois Riegl argued in his Stilfragen that acanthus ornament originated as a sculptural version of the palmette, only began to resemble Acanthus spinosus. In Ancient Greek architecture acanthus ornament appears extensively in the capitals of the Corinthian and Composite orders, applied to friezes and other decorated areas; the oldest known example of a Corinthian column is in the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae in Arcadia, c.
450 -- 420 BC. The Romans elaborated the order with the ends of the leaves curled, it was their favourite order for grand buildings, with their own invention of the Composite, first seen in the epoch of Augustus. Acanthus decoration continued in popularity in Byzantine and Gothic architecture, it saw a major revival in the Renaissance, still is used today. The Roman writer Vitruvius related that the Corinthian order had been invented by Callimachus, a Greek architect and sculptor, inspired by the sight of a votive basket, left on the grave of a young girl. A few of her toys were in it, a square tile had been placed over the basket, to protect them from the weather. An acanthus plant had grown through the woven basket, mixing its spiny cut leaves with the weave of the basket; some of the most detailed and elaborate acanthus decoration occurs in important buildings of the Byzantine architectural tradition, where the leaves are undercut and spread over a wide surface. Use of the motif continued in Medieval art in sculpture and wood carving and in friezes, although it is stylized and generalized, so that one doubts that the artists connected it with any plant in particular.
After centuries without decorated capitals, they were revived enthusiastically in Romanesque architecture using foliage designs, including acanthus. Curling acanthus-type leaves occur in the borders and ornamented initial letters of illuminated manuscripts, are found in combination with palmettes in woven silk textiles. In the Renaissance classical models were followed closely, the acanthus becomes recognisable again in large-scale architectural examples; the term is also found describing more stylized and abstracted foliage motifs, where the similarity to the species is weak. Palmette Arabesque Media related to Acanthus ornaments at Wikimedia Commons
Asia
Asia is Earth's largest and most populous continent, located in the Eastern and Northern Hemispheres. It shares the continental landmass of Eurasia with the continent of Europe and the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa. Asia covers an area of 44,579,000 square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Asia is notable for not only its overall large size and population, but dense and large settlements, as well as vast populated regions, its 4.5 billion people constitute 60% of the world's population. In general terms, Asia is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Arctic Ocean; the border of Asia with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. It has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity.
The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East–West cultural and ethnic differences, some of which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The most accepted boundaries place Asia to the east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa. China and India alternated in being the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 CE. China was a major economic power and attracted many to the east, for many the legendary wealth and prosperity of the ancient culture of India personified Asia, attracting European commerce and colonialism; the accidental discovery of a trans-Atlantic route from Europe to America by Columbus while in search for a route to India demonstrates this deep fascination. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Asia was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Sikhism, as well as many other religions.
Given its size and diversity, the concept of Asia—a name dating back to classical antiquity—may have more to do with human geography than physical geography. Asia varies across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, environments, historical ties and government systems, it has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot desert in the Middle East, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in Siberia. The boundary between Asia and Africa is the Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez, the Suez Canal; this makes Egypt a transcontinental country, with the Sinai peninsula in Asia and the remainder of the country in Africa. The border between Asia and Europe was defined by European academics; the Don River became unsatisfactory to northern Europeans when Peter the Great, king of the Tsardom of Russia, defeating rival claims of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire to the eastern lands, armed resistance by the tribes of Siberia, synthesized a new Russian Empire extending to the Ural Mountains and beyond, founded in 1721.
The major geographical theorist of the empire was a former Swedish prisoner-of-war, taken at the Battle of Poltava in 1709 and assigned to Tobolsk, where he associated with Peter's Siberian official, Vasily Tatishchev, was allowed freedom to conduct geographical and anthropological studies in preparation for a future book. In Sweden, five years after Peter's death, in 1730 Philip Johan von Strahlenberg published a new atlas proposing the Urals as the border of Asia. Tatishchev announced; the latter had suggested the Emba River as the lower boundary. Over the next century various proposals were made until the Ural River prevailed in the mid-19th century; the border had been moved perforce from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea into which the Ural River projects. The border between the Black Sea and the Caspian is placed along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains, although it is sometimes placed further north; the border between Asia and the region of Oceania is placed somewhere in the Malay Archipelago.
The Maluku Islands in Indonesia are considered to lie on the border of southeast Asia, with New Guinea, to the east of the islands, being wholly part of Oceania. The terms Southeast Asia and Oceania, devised in the 19th century, have had several vastly different geographic meanings since their inception; the chief factor in determining which islands of the Malay Archipelago are Asian has been the location of the colonial possessions of the various empires there. Lewis and Wigen assert, "The narrowing of'Southeast Asia' to its present boundaries was thus a gradual process." Geographical Asia is a cultural artifact of European conceptions of the world, beginning with the Ancient Greeks, being imposed onto other cultures, an imprecise concept causing endemic contention about what it means. Asia does not correspond to the cultural borders of its various types of constituents. From the time of Herodotus a minority of geographers have rejected the three-continent system on the grounds that there is no substantial physical separation between
Acanthaceae
Acanthaceae is a family of dicotyledonous flowering plants containing 250 genera and about 2500 species. Most are shrubs, or twining vines. Only a few species are distributed in temperate regions; the four main centres of distribution are Indonesia and Malaysia, Africa and Central America. Representatives of the family can be found in nearly every habitat, including dense or open forests, wet fields and valleys, sea coast and marine areas and mangrove forests. Plants in this family have simple, decussated leaves with entire margins, without stipules; the leaves may contain calcium carbonate concretions, seen as streaks on the surface. The flowers are perfect, zygomorphic to nearly actinomorphic, arranged in an inflorescence, either a spike, raceme, or cyme. A colorful bract subtends each flower; the calyx has four or five lobes. The fruit is a two-celled capsule, dehiscing somewhat explosively. In most species, the seeds are attached to a hooked stalk that ejects them from the capsule; this trait is shared by all members of the clade Acanthoideae.
A 1995 study of seed expulsion in Acanthaceae used high speed video pictures to show that retinacula propel seeds away from the parent plant when the fruits dehisce, thereby helping the plant gain maximum seed dispersal range. A species well known to temperate gardeners is bear's breeches, a herbaceous perennial plant with big leaves and flower spikes up to 2 m tall. Tropical genera familiar to gardeners include Justicia. Avicennia, a genus of mangrove trees placed in Verbenaceae or in its own family, Avicenniaceae, is included in Acanthaceae by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group on the basis of molecular phylogenetic studies that show it to be associated with this family. Traditionally the most important part use in Acanthaceae is the leaves and they are used externally for wounds; some research has indicated that Acanthaceae possess antifungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-pyretic, insecticidal, immunomodulatory, anti-platelet aggregation and anti-viral potential. For instance, Acanthus ilicifolius, whose chemical composition has been researched, is used in ethnopharmaceutical applications, including in Indian and Chinese traditional medicine.
Various parts of Acanthus ilicifolius have been used to treat asthma, leprosy, snake bites, rheumatoid arthritis. The leaves of Acanthus ebracteatus, noted for their antioxidant properties, are used for making Thai herbal tea in Thailand and Indonesia. Phytochemical reports on family Acanthaceae are glycosides, benzonoids, phenolic compounds and triterpenoids. Since the first comprehensive classification of Acanthaceae in 1847 by Nees, there have been a few major revisions presented since for the whole family. Lindau, in 1895, divided the family into the subfamilies Mendoncioideae, Thunbergioideae and Acanthoideae. Critically, Mendoncioideae and Nelsonioideae do not possess retinaculate fruits—and it is this distinction, between classifying Acanthaceae into a family that includes those clades with non-retinaculate fruits and one that excludes them, that still persists to the modern day. Bremekamp, in 1965, presented a classification of Acanthaceae that differed from that of Lindau, for his Acanthaceae excluded genera that lack retinaculate fruits.
He placed Nelsonioideae within Scrophulariaceae, classified Thunbergiaceae and Mendonciaceae as distinct families and divided his Acanthaceae into two groups based on the presence or absence of cystoliths, articulate stems, monothecate anthers, colpate pollen. In Scotland and Vollesen's 2000 study, they accepted 221 genera and detailed five major groups within Acanthaceae s.s., equivalent to Acanthoideae Link sensu Lindau 1895. Out of those 221 genera, they placed 201 of them into seven infrafamilial taxa of Acanthaceae, leaving only 20 unplaced. In the current understanding of Acanthaceae, Acanthaceae s.s. includes only those clades with retinaculate fruits, while Acanthaceae s.l. includes those clades as well as Thunbergioideae and Avicennia. Much research, using both molecular data and fossils, has been conducted in recent years regarding the dating and distribution of the Acanthaceae and Lamiales lineage, although there still remains some ambiguity. In a 2004 study on the molecular phylogenetic dating of asterid flowering plants, researchers estimated 106 million years for the stem lineage of Lamiales, 67 MY for the stem lineage of Acanthaceae, 54 MY for the crown node of Acanthaceae.
These estimates are older than those based on fossils that can confidently be assigned to Lamiales, which are middle Eocene in age, ca. 48-37 MY. Palynomorphs that definitively show the existence of Acanthaceae are known from the upper Miocene, with the oldest ca. 22 MY. The 246 accepted genera, according to Germplasm Resources Information Network, are: Thomandersia Baill. → Thomandersiaceae Schwarzbach, Andrea E.. "Phylogenetic relationships of the mangrove family Avicenniaceae based on chloroplast and nuclear ribosomal DNA seq
Flowering plant
The flowering plants known as angiosperms, Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 64 orders, 416 families 13,164 known genera and c. 369,000 known species. Like gymnosperms, angiosperms are seed-producing plants. However, they are distinguished from gymnosperms by characteristics including flowers, endosperm within the seeds, the production of fruits that contain the seeds. Etymologically, angiosperm means a plant; the term comes from the Greek words sperma. The ancestors of flowering plants diverged from gymnosperms in the Triassic Period, 245 to 202 million years ago, the first flowering plants are known from 160 mya, they diversified extensively during the Early Cretaceous, became widespread by 120 mya, replaced conifers as the dominant trees from 100 to 60 mya. Angiosperms differ from other seed plants in several ways, described in the table below; these distinguishing characteristics taken together have made the angiosperms the most diverse and numerous land plants and the most commercially important group to humans.
Angiosperm stems are made up of seven layers. The amount and complexity of tissue-formation in flowering plants exceeds that of gymnosperms; the vascular bundles of the stem are arranged such that the phloem form concentric rings. In the dicotyledons, the bundles in the young stem are arranged in an open ring, separating a central pith from an outer cortex. In each bundle, separating the xylem and phloem, is a layer of meristem or active formative tissue known as cambium. By the formation of a layer of cambium between the bundles, a complete ring is formed, a regular periodical increase in thickness results from the development of xylem on the inside and phloem on the outside; the soft phloem becomes crushed, but the hard wood persists and forms the bulk of the stem and branches of the woody perennial. Owing to differences in the character of the elements produced at the beginning and end of the season, the wood is marked out in transverse section into concentric rings, one for each season of growth, called annual rings.
Among the monocotyledons, the bundles are more numerous in the young stem and are scattered through the ground tissue. They once formed the stem increases in diameter only in exceptional cases; the characteristic feature of angiosperms is the flower. Flowers show remarkable variation in form and elaboration, provide the most trustworthy external characteristics for establishing relationships among angiosperm species; the function of the flower is to ensure fertilization of the ovule and development of fruit containing seeds. The floral apparatus may arise terminally from the axil of a leaf; as in violets, a flower arises singly in the axil of an ordinary foliage-leaf. More the flower-bearing portion of the plant is distinguished from the foliage-bearing or vegetative portion, forms a more or less elaborate branch-system called an inflorescence. There are two kinds of reproductive cells produced by flowers. Microspores, which will divide to become pollen grains, are the "male" cells and are borne in the stamens.
The "female" cells called megaspores, which will divide to become the egg cell, are contained in the ovule and enclosed in the carpel. The flower may consist only of these parts, as in willow, where each flower comprises only a few stamens or two carpels. Other structures are present and serve to protect the sporophylls and to form an envelope attractive to pollinators; the individual members of these surrounding structures are known as petals. The outer series is green and leaf-like, functions to protect the rest of the flower the bud; the inner series is, in general, white or brightly colored, is more delicate in structure. It functions to attract bird pollinators. Attraction is effected by color and nectar, which may be secreted in some part of the flower; the characteristics that attract pollinators account for the popularity of flowers and flowering plants among humans. While the majority of flowers are perfect or hermaphrodite, flowering plants have developed numerous morphological and physiological mechanisms to reduce or prevent self-fertilization.
Heteromorphic flowers have short carpels and long stamens, or vice versa, so animal pollinators cannot transfer pollen to the pistil. Homomorphic flowers may employ a biochemical mechanism called self-incompatibility to discriminate between self and non-self pollen grains. In other species, the male and female parts are morphologically separated, developing on different flowers; the botanical term "Angiosperm", from the Ancient Greek αγγείον, angeíon and σπέρμα, was coined in the form Angiospermae by Paul Hermann in 1690, as the name of one of his primary divisions of the plant kingdom. This included flowering plants possessing seeds enclosed in capsules, distinguished from his Gymnospermae, or flowering plants with achenial or schizo-carpic fruits, the whole fruit or each of its pieces being here regarded as a seed and naked; the term and its antonym were maintained by Carl Linnaeus with the same sense, but with restricted application, in the names of the orders of his class Didynamia. Its use with any
Media related to Acanthus at Wikimedia Commons
Data related to Acanthus at Wikispecies