1.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
2.
Plant
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Plants are mainly multicellular, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. The term is generally limited to the green plants, which form an unranked clade Viridiplantae. This includes the plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae. Green plants have cell walls containing cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts and their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although reproduction is also common. There are about 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, green plants provide most of the worlds molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of Earths ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form humankinds basic foodstuffs, Plants play many roles in culture. They are used as ornaments and, until recently and in variety, they have served as the source of most medicines. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology, Plants are one of the two groups into which all living things were traditionally divided, the other is animals. The division goes back at least as far as Aristotle, who distinguished between plants, which generally do not move, and animals, which often are mobile to catch their food. Much later, when Linnaeus created the basis of the system of scientific classification. Since then, it has become clear that the plant kingdom as originally defined included several unrelated groups, however, these organisms are still often considered plants, particularly in popular contexts. When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a group of organisms or taxon. The evolutionary history of plants is not yet settled. Those which have been called plants are in bold, the way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies considerably between authors. Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce energy through photosynthesis, most conspicuous among the algae are the seaweeds, multicellular algae that may roughly resemble land plants, but are classified among the brown, red and green algae. Each of these groups also includes various microscopic and single-celled organisms
3.
Flowering plant
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The flowering plants, also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 416 families, approx. 13,164 known genera and a total of c.295,383 known species, etymologically, angiosperm means a plant that produces seeds within an enclosure, in other words, a fruiting plant. The term angiosperm comes from the Greek composite word meaning enclosed seeds, the ancestors of flowering plants diverged from gymnosperms in the Triassic Period, during the range 245 to 202 million years ago, and the first flowering plants are known from 160 mya. They diversified extensively during the Lower Cretaceous, became widespread by 120 mya, angiosperms differ from other seed plants in several ways, described in the table. These distinguishing characteristics taken together have made the angiosperms the most diverse and numerous land plants, 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 xylem and phloem form concentric rings, in the dicotyledons, the bundles in the very 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, the soft phloem becomes crushed, but the hard wood persists and forms the bulk of the stem and branches of the woody perennial. Among the monocotyledons, the bundles are more numerous in the stem and are scattered through the ground tissue. They contain no cambium and 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, and 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 on a shoot or from the axil of a leaf, occasionally, as in violets, a flower arises singly in the axil of an ordinary foliage-leaf. There are two kinds of cells produced by flowers. Microspores, which divide to become pollen grains, are the male cells and are borne in the stamens. The female cells called megaspores, which divide to become the egg cell, are contained in the ovule. The flower may consist only of parts, as in willow. Usually, other structures are present and serve to protect the sporophylls, the individual members of these surrounding structures are known as sepals and petals. The outer series is usually green and leaf-like, and functions to protect the rest of the flower, the inner series is, in general, white or brightly colored, and is more delicate in structure. It functions to attract insect or bird pollinators, attraction is effected by color, scent, and nectar, which may be secreted in some part of the flower
4.
Eudicots
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The eudicots, Eudicotidae or eudicotyledons are a monophyletic clade of flowering plants that had been called tricolpates or non-magnoliid dicots by previous authors. The close relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains was initially seen in studies of shared derived characters. These plants have a trait in their pollen grains of exhibiting three colpi or grooves paralleling the polar axis. Later molecular evidence confirmed the basis for the evolutionary relationships among flowering plants with tricolpate pollen grains. The term means true dicotyledons, as it contains the majority of plants that have been considered dicots and have characteristics of the dicots, the term eudicots has subsequently been widely adopted in botany to refer to one of the two largest clades of angiosperms, monocots being the other. The remaining angiosperms are sometimes referred to as basal angiosperms or paleodicots, the other name for the eudicots is tricolpates, a name which refers to the grooved structure of the pollen. Members of the group have tricolpate pollen, or forms derived from it and these pollens have three or more pores set in furrows called colpi. In contrast, most of the seed plants produce monosulcate pollen. The name tricolpates is preferred by some botanists to avoid confusion with the dicots, numerous familiar plants are eudicots, including many common food plants, trees, and ornamentals. Most leafy trees of midlatitudes also belong to eudicots, with exceptions being magnolias and tulip trees which belong to magnoliids, and Ginkgo biloba. The name eudicots is used in the APG system, of 1998 and it is applied to a clade, a monophyletic group, which includes most of the dicots. The eudicots can be divided into two groups, the basal eudicots and the core eudicots, basal eudicot is an informal name for a paraphyletic group. The core eudicots are a monophyletic group, a 2010 study suggested the core eudicots can be divided into two clades, Gunnerales and a clade called Pentapetalae, comprising all the remaining core eudicots
5.
Rosids
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The rosids are members of a large clade of flowering plants, containing about 70,000 species, more than a quarter of all angiosperms. The clade is divided into 16 to 20 orders, depending upon circumscription and classification and these orders, in turn, together comprise about 140 families. Fossil rosids are known from the Cretaceous period, molecular clock estimates indicate that the rosids originated in the Aptian or Albian stages of the Cretaceous, between 125 and 99.6 million years ago. The name is based upon the name Rosidae, which had usually been understood to be a subclass, in 1967, Armen Takhtajan showed that the correct basis for the name Rosidae is a description of a group of plants published in 1830 by Friedrich Gottlieb Bartling. The clade was later renamed Rosidae and has been variously delimited by different authors, the name rosids is informal and not assumed to have any particular taxonomic rank like the names authorized by the ICBN. The rosids are monophyletic based upon evidence found by molecular phylogenetic analysis, three different definitions of the rosids were used. Some authors included the orders Saxifragales and Vitales in the rosids, others excluded both of these orders. The circumscription used in this article is that of the APG IV classification, which includes Vitales, the rosids and Saxifragales form the superrosids clade. This is one of three groups compose the Pentapetalae, the others being Dilleniales and the superasterids. The rosids consist of two groups, the order Vitales and the eurosids, the eurosids, in turn, are divided into two groups, fabids and malvids. The rosids consist of 17 orders, in addition to Vitales, there are 8 orders in fabids and 8 orders in malvids. Some of the orders have only recently been recognized and these are Vitales, Zygophyllales, Crossosomatales, Picramniales, and Huerteales. The phylogeny of Rosids shown below is adapted from the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group website, the nitrogen-fixing clade contains a high number of actinorhizal plants. Not all plants in this clade are actinorhizal, however, media related to Rosids at Wikimedia Commons
6.
Meliaceae
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Meliaceae, or the Mahogany family, is a flowering plant family of mostly trees and shrubs in the order Sapindales. They are characterised by alternate, usually pinnate leaves without stipules, most species are evergreen, but some are deciduous, either in the dry season or in winter. Various species are used for oil, soap-making, insecticides. A generic monograph of the Meliaceae, Meliaceae in L. Watson and M. J. Dallwitz. Project Meliaceae For reference about the Malaysian species visit, http, //sites. google. com/site/malaysianedibleflora
7.
Azadirachta
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Azadirachta is a genus of two species of trees in the mahogany family. Numerous species have been proposed for the genus but only two are recognized, Azadirachta excelsa and the economically important tree Azadirachta indica. The latter is called the Neem tree, see also Neem oil. Both species are native to the Indomalaysian region, and A. indica is also cultivated and naturalized outside its native range. In traditional medicine in India, the resin from the trees have been attributed with medical benefits, a component in the resin is an effective insecticide, see azadirachtin. Another component is an effective anti-fungal, see Azadirachta indica and these species should not be confused with Melia azedarach, which is a tree in a different genus of the mahogany family. In, Flora Malesiana ser.1 Spermatophyta 12, 1-407, pennington, T. D. and B. T. Styles. A generic monograph of the Meliaceae
8.
Binomial nomenclature
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Such a name is called a binomial name, a binomen, binominal name or a scientific name, more informally it is also called a Latin name. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs, for example, humans belong to the genus Homo and within this genus to the species Homo sapiens. The formal introduction of system of naming species is credited to Carl Linnaeus. But Gaspard Bauhin, in as early as 1623, had introduced in his book Pinax theatri botanici many names of genera that were adopted by Linnaeus. Although the general principles underlying binomial nomenclature are common to these two codes, there are differences, both in the terminology they use and in their precise rules. Similarly, both parts are italicized when a binomial name occurs in normal text, thus the binomial name of the annual phlox is now written as Phlox drummondii. In scientific works, the authority for a name is usually given, at least when it is first mentioned. In zoology Patella vulgata Linnaeus,1758, the original name given by Linnaeus was Fringilla domestica, the parentheses indicate that the species is now considered to belong in a different genus. The ICZN does not require that the name of the person who changed the genus be given, nor the date on which the change was made, in botany Amaranthus retroflexus L. – L. is the standard abbreviation used in botany for Linnaeus. – Linnaeus first named this bluebell species Scilla italica, Rothmaler transferred it to the genus Hyacinthoides, the ICN does not require that the dates of either publication be specified. Prior to the adoption of the binomial system of naming species. Together they formed a system of polynomial nomenclature and these names had two separate functions. First, to designate or label the species, and second, to be a diagnosis or description, such polynomial names may sometimes look like binomials, but are significantly different. For example, Gerards herbal describes various kinds of spiderwort, The first is called Phalangium ramosum, Branched Spiderwort, is aptly termed Phalangium Ephemerum Virginianum, Soon-Fading Spiderwort of Virginia. The Latin phrases are short descriptions, rather than identifying labels, the Bauhins, in particular Caspar Bauhin, took some important steps towards the binomial system, by pruning the Latin descriptions, in many cases to two words. The adoption by biologists of a system of binomial nomenclature is due to Swedish botanist and physician Carl von Linné. It was in his 1753 Species Plantarum that he first began using a one-word trivial name together with a generic name in a system of binomial nomenclature. This trivial name is what is now known as an epithet or specific name
9.
Adrien-Henri de Jussieu
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Adrien-Henri de Jussieu was a French botanist. Born in Paris as the son of botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, when his father retired in 1826, he succeeded him at the Jardin des Plantes, in 1845 he became professor of organography of plants. He was also president of the French Academy of Sciences, De Jussieu was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1850. His main publications were the Cours élémentaire de botanique and the Géographie botanique, as well as several monographs, in botanical references he is usually abbreviated as Adr. Juss. also sometimes as A. Juss. as his father already has the abbreviation Juss, the asteroid 9470 Jussieu was named in honor of the de Jussieu family. This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Herbermann, Charles
10.
Synonym (taxonomy)
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For example, Linnaeus was the first to give a scientific name to the Norway spruce, which he called Pinus abies. This name is no longer in use, it is now a synonym of the current scientific name which is Picea abies, unlike synonyms in other contexts, in taxonomy a synonym is not interchangeable with the name of which it is a synonym. In taxonomy, synonyms are not equals, but have a different status, for any taxon with a particular circumscription, position, and rank, only one scientific name is considered to be the correct one at any given time. A synonym cannot exist in isolation, it is always an alternative to a different scientific name, given that the correct name of a taxon depends on the taxonomic viewpoint used a name that is one taxonomists synonym may be another taxonomists correct name. Synonyms may arise whenever the same taxon is described and named more than once, independently. They may also arise when existing taxa are changed, as when two taxa are joined to one, a species is moved to a different genus. To the general user of scientific names, in such as agriculture, horticulture, ecology, general science. A synonym is a name that was used as the correct scientific name but which has been displaced by another scientific name. Thus Oxford Dictionaries Online defines the term as a name which has the same application as another. In handbooks and general texts, it is useful to have mentioned as such after the current scientific name. Synonyms used in this way may not always meet the strict definitions of the synonym in the formal rules of nomenclature which govern scientific names. Changes of scientific name have two causes, they may be taxonomic or nomenclatural, a name change may be caused by changes in the circumscription, position or rank of a taxon, representing a change in taxonomic, scientific insight. A name change may be due to purely nomenclatural reasons, that is, based on the rules of nomenclature, the earliest such name is called the senior synonym, while the later name is the junior synonym. One basic principle of zoological nomenclature is that the earliest correctly published name, synonyms are important because if the earliest name cannot be used, then the next available junior synonym must be used for the taxon. Objective synonyms refer to taxa with the type and same rank. For example, John Edward Gray published the name Antilocapra anteflexa in 1855 for a species of pronghorn, however, it is now commonly accepted that his specimen was an unusual individual of the species Antilocapra americana published by George Ord in 1815. Ords name thus takes precedence, with Antilocapra anteflexa being a subjective synonym. Objective synonyms are common at the level of genera, because for various reasons two genera may contain the type species, these are objective synonyms
11.
Mahogany
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West Indian or Cuban mahogany, native to southern Florida and the Caribbean, formerly dominant in the mahogany trade, but not in widespread commercial use since World War II. Swietenia humilis, a small and often twisted mahogany tree limited to dry forests in Pacific Central America that is of limited commercial utility. Some botanists believe that S. humilis is a variant of S. macrophylla. While the three Swietenia species are classified officially as genuine mahogany, other Meliaceae species with timber uses are classified as true mahogany, some may or may not have the word mahogany in their trade or common name. Some members of the genus Shorea of the family Dipterocarpaceae are also sold as Philippine mahogany. Mahogany is an important lumber prized for its beauty, durability, and color. The leading importer of mahogany is the United States, followed by Britain, while the largest exporter today is Peru and it was estimated that in 2000, some 57,000 mahogany trees were harvested to supply the U. S. furniture trade alone. Mahogany is the tree of the Dominican Republic and Belize. A mahogany tree with two woodcutters bearing an axe and a paddle also appears on the Belizean national coat of arms, under the motto, Sub umbra floreo. The natural distribution of species within the Americas is geographically distinct. In the 20th century various botanists attempted to further define S. macrophylla in South America as a new species, such as S. candollei Pittier, but many authorities consider these spurious. According to Record and Hess, all of the mahogany of continental North and South America can be considered as one botanical species, the name mahogany was initially associated only with those islands in the West Indies under British control. When transported to Jamaica as slaves, they gave the name to the similar trees they saw there. Though this interpretation has been disputed, no one has suggested a more plausible origin, the indigenous Arawak name for the tree is not known. In 1671 the word appeared in print for the first time. Among botanists and naturalists, however, the tree was considered a type of cedar, the following year it was assigned to a new genus by Nicholas Joseph Jacquin, and named Swietenia mahagoni. Until the 19th century all of the mahogany was regarded as one species, although varying in quality and character according to soil and climate. In 1836 the German botanist Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini identified a species while working on specimens collected on the Pacific coast of Mexico
12.
Indian subcontinent
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Geologically, the Indian subcontinent is related to the land mass that rifted from Gondwana and merged with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago. Geographically, it is the region in south-central Asia delineated by the Himalayas in the north, the Hindu Kush in the west. Politically, the Indian subcontinent usually includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, sometimes, the term South Asia is used interchangeably with Indian subcontinent. There is no consensus about which countries should be included in each and it is first attested in 1845 to refer to the North and South Americas, before they were regarded as separate continents. Its use to refer to the Indian subcontinent is seen from the twentieth century. It was especially convenient for referring to the region comprising both the British India and the states under British Paramountcy. The term Indian subcontinent also has a geological significance and it was, like the various continents, a part of the supercontinent of Gondwana. A series of tectonic splits caused formation of basins, each drifting in various directions. The geological region called the Greater India once included the Madagascar, Seychelles, Antartica, as a geological term, Indian subcontinent has meant that region formed from the collision of the Indian basin with Eurasia nearly 55 million years ago, towards the end of Paleocene. The Indian subcontinent has been a particularly common in the British Empire. The region, state Mittal and Thursby, has also labelled as India, Greater India. The BBC and some sources refer to the region as the Asian Subcontinent. Some academics refer to it as South Asian Subcontinent, the terms Indian subcontinent and South Asia are sometimes used interchangeably. There is no accepted definition on which countries are a part of South Asia or Indian subcontinent. In dictionary entries, the term subcontinent signifies a large, distinguishable subdivision of a continent, the region experienced high volcanic activity and plate subdivisions, creating Madagascar, Seychelles, Antartica, Austrolasia and the Indian subcontinent basin. The Indian subcontinent drifted northeastwards, colliding with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago and this geological region largely includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The zone where the Eurasian and Indian subcontinent plates meet remains one of the active areas. The English term mainly continues to refer to the Indian subcontinent, physiographically, it is a peninsular region in south-central Asia delineated by the Himalayas in the north, the Hindu Kush in the west, and the Arakanese in the east
13.
India
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India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and it is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast. It shares land borders with Pakistan to the west, China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the northeast, in the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Indias Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a border with Thailand. The Indian subcontinent was home to the urban Indus Valley Civilisation of the 3rd millennium BCE, in the following millennium, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism began to be composed. Social stratification, based on caste, emerged in the first millennium BCE, early political consolidations took place under the Maurya and Gupta empires, the later peninsular Middle Kingdoms influenced cultures as far as southeast Asia. In the medieval era, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam arrived, much of the north fell to the Delhi sultanate, the south was united under the Vijayanagara Empire. The economy expanded in the 17th century in the Mughal empire, in the mid-18th century, the subcontinent came under British East India Company rule, and in the mid-19th under British crown rule. A nationalist movement emerged in the late 19th century, which later, under Mahatma Gandhi, was noted for nonviolent resistance, in 2015, the Indian economy was the worlds seventh largest by nominal GDP and third largest by purchasing power parity. Following market-based economic reforms in 1991, India became one of the major economies and is considered a newly industrialised country. However, it continues to face the challenges of poverty, corruption, malnutrition, a nuclear weapons state and regional power, it has the third largest standing army in the world and ranks sixth in military expenditure among nations. India is a constitutional republic governed under a parliamentary system. It is a pluralistic, multilingual and multi-ethnic society and is home to a diversity of wildlife in a variety of protected habitats. The name India is derived from Indus, which originates from the Old Persian word Hindu, the latter term stems from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, which was the historical local appellation for the Indus River. The ancient Greeks referred to the Indians as Indoi, which translates as The people of the Indus, the geographical term Bharat, which is recognised by the Constitution of India as an official name for the country, is used by many Indian languages in its variations. Scholars believe it to be named after the Vedic tribe of Bharatas in the second millennium B. C. E and it is also traditionally associated with the rule of the legendary emperor Bharata. Gaṇarājya is the Sanskrit/Hindi term for republic dating back to the ancient times, hindustan is a Persian name for India dating back to the 3rd century B. C. E. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then and its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety
14.
Nepal
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Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked central Himalayan country in South Asia. Nepal is divided into 7 provinces and 75 districts and 744 local units including 4 metropolises,13 sub-metropolises,246 municipal councils and 481 village and it has a population of 26.4 million and is the 93rd largest country by area. Bordering China in the north and India in the south, east, Nepal does not border Bangladesh, which is located within only 27 km of its southeastern tip. It neither borders Bhutan due to the Indian state of Sikkim being located in between, Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forested hills, and eight of the worlds ten tallest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Kathmandu is the capital and largest city. It is a nation with Nepali as the official language. The territory of Nepal has a history since the Neolithic age. The name Nepal is first recorded in texts from the Vedic Age, the era which founded Hinduism, in the middle of the first millennium BCE, Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, was born in southern Nepal. Parts of northern Nepal were intertwined with the culture of Tibet, the Kathmandu Valley in central Nepal became known as Nepal proper because of its complex urban civilization. It was the seat of the prosperous Newar confederacy known as Nepal Mandala, the Himalayan branch of the ancient Silk Road was dominated by the valleys traders. The cosmopolitan region developed distinct traditional art and architecture, by the 18th century, the Gorkha Kingdom achieved the unification of Nepal. The Shah dynasty established the Kingdom of Nepal and later formed an alliance with the British Empire, the country was never colonized but served as a buffer state between Imperial China and Colonial India. In the 20th century, Nepal ended its isolation and forged ties with regional powers. Parliamentary democracy was introduced in 1951, but was suspended by Nepalese monarchs in 1960 and 2005. The Nepalese Civil War resulted in the proclamation of a republic in 2008, modern Nepal is a federal secular parliamentary republic. Nepal is a nation, ranking 144th on the Human Development Index in 2016. The country struggles with the transition from a monarchy to a republic and it also suffers from high levels of hunger and poverty. Despite these challenges, Nepal is making progress, with the government declaring its commitment to elevate the nation from least developed country status by 2022
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Pakistan
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Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a federal parliamentary republic in South Asia on the crossroads of Central Asia and Western Asia. It is the sixth-most populous country with a population exceeding 200 million people, in terms of area, it is the 33rd-largest country in the world with an area covering 881,913 square kilometres. It is separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistans narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, Pakistan is unique among Muslim countries in that it is the only country to have been created in the name of Islam. As a result of the Pakistan Movement led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah and it is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a similarly diverse geography and wildlife. Initially a dominion, Pakistan adopted a constitution in 1956, becoming an Islamic republic, an ethnic civil war in 1971 resulted in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh. The new constitution stipulated that all laws were to conform to the injunctions of Islam as laid down in the Quran. Pakistan has an economy with a well-integrated agriculture sector. The Pakistani economy is the 24th-largest in the world in terms of purchasing power and it is ranked among the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world, and is backed by one of the worlds largest and fastest-growing middle classes. The post-independence history of Pakistan has been characterised by periods of military rule, the country continues to face challenging problems such as illiteracy, healthcare, and corruption, but has substantially reduced poverty and terrorism and expanded per capita income. It is also a member of CERN. Pakistan is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, the name Pakistan literally means land of the pure in Urdu and Persian. It is a play on the word pāk meaning pure in Persian and Pashto, the letter i was incorporated to ease pronunciation and form the linguistically correct and meaningful name. Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan, the earliest known inhabitants in the region were Soanian during the Lower Paleolithic, of whom stone tools have been found in the Soan Valley of Punjab. The Vedic Civilization, characterised by Indo-Aryan culture, laid the foundations of Hinduism, Multan was an important Hindu pilgrimage centre. The Vedic civilisation flourished in the ancient Gandhāran city of Takṣaśilā, the Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander, prospering the Greco-Buddhist culture in the region. Taxila had one of the earliest universities and centres of education in the world. At its zenith, the Rai Dynasty of Sindh ruled this region, the Pala Dynasty was the last Buddhist empire, which, under Dharampala and Devapala, stretched across South Asia from what is now Bangladesh through Northern India to Pakistan. The Arab conqueror Muhammad bin Qasim conquered the Indus valley from Sindh to Multan in southern Punjab in 711 AD, the Pakistan governments official chronology identifies this as the time when the foundation of Pakistan was laid
16.
Bangladesh
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Bangladesh, officially the Peoples Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It shares land borders with India and Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and China are located near Bangladesh but do not share a border with it. The countrys maritime territory in the Bay of Bengal is roughly equal to the size of its land area, Bangladesh is the worlds eighth most populous country. Dhaka is its capital and largest city, followed by Chittagong which has the countrys largest port, Bangladesh forms the largest and eastern part of the Bengal region. Bangladeshis include people of different ethnic groups and religions, Bengalis, who speak the official Bengali, make up 98% of the population. The politically dominant Bengali Muslims make the nation the worlds third largest Muslim-majority country, most of Bangladesh is covered by the Bengal delta, the largest delta on Earth. The country has 700 rivers and 8,046 km of inland waterways, highlands with evergreen forests are found in the northeastern and southeastern regions of the country. Bangladesh has many islands and a coral reef and it is home to the Sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world. The countrys biodiversity includes a vast array of plant and wildlife, including critically endangered Bengal tigers, the Greeks and Romans identified the region as Gangaridai, a powerful kingdom of the historical subcontinent, in the 3rd century BCE. Archaeological research has unearthed several ancient cities in Bangladesh, which had trade links for millennia. The Bengal Sultanate and Mughal Bengal transformed the region into a cosmopolitan Islamic imperial power between the 14th and 18th centuries, the region was home to many principalities which had inland naval prowess. It was also a center of the worldwide muslin and silk trade. As part of British India, the region was influenced by the Bengali renaissance, the Partition of British India made East Bengal a part of the Dominion of Pakistan, and was renamed as East Pakistan. The region witnessed the Bengali Language Movement in 1952 and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, after independence, a parliamentary republic was established. A presidential government was in place between 1975 and 1990, followed by a return to parliamentary democracy, the country has also been affected by poverty, natural disasters, hunger, dominant party systems and military coups. Bangladesh is a power and a major developing nation. Listed as one of the Next Eleven, it has the 46th largest economy and it is one of the largest textile exporters in the world. Its major trading partners are the European Union, the United States, China, India, Japan, Malaysia, with its strategically vital location between Southern, Eastern and Southeast Asia, Bangladesh is an important promoter of regional connectivity and cooperation
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Sri Lanka
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Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia near south-east India. Sri Lanka has maritime borders with India to the northwest and the Maldives to the southwest, Sri Lankas documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to World War II. Sri Lanka was known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon, Sri Lankas recent history has been marred by a thirty-year civil war which decisively ended when the Sri Lankan military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. A diverse and multicultural country, Sri Lanka is home to many religions, ethnic groups, in addition to the majority Sinhalese, it is home to large groups of Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils, Moors, Burghers, Malays, Kaffirs and the aboriginal Vedda. Sri Lanka has a rich Buddhist heritage, and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka is a republic and a unitary state governed by a semi-presidential system. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the capital and largest city. Along with the Maldives, Sri Lanka is one of the two countries in South Asia that are rated among high human development on the Human Development Index. In antiquity, Sri Lanka was known to travellers by a variety of names, according to the Mahavamsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the land Tambapanni, because his followers hands were reddened by the red soil of the area. In Hindu mythology, such as the Mahabharata, the island was referred to as Lankā, in Tamil, the island is referred to as Eelam. Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanā or Taprobanē from the word Tambapanni, as a British crown colony, the island was known as Ceylon, it achieved independence as the Dominion of Ceylon in 1948. The country is known in Sinhalese as Śrī Laṃkā and in Tamil as Ilaṅkai, in 1972, its formal name was changed to Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka. Later in 1978 it was changed to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, as the name Ceylon still appears in the names of a number of organisations, the Sri Lankan government announced in 2011 a plan to rename all those over which it has authority. The pre-history of Sri Lanka goes back 125,000 years, the era spans the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and early Iron Ages. Among the Paleolithic human settlements discovered in Sri Lanka, Pahiyangala and it is said that Kubera was overthrown by his demon stepbrother Ravana, the powerful emperor who built a mythical flying machine named Dandu Monara. The modern city of Wariyapola is described as Ravanas airport, early inhabitants of Sri Lanka were probably ancestors of the Vedda people, an indigenous people numbering approximately 2,500 living in modern-day Sri Lanka. According to the Mahāvamsa, a written in Pāḷi, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka are the Yakshas and Nagas. Ancient cemeteries that were used before 600BC and other signs of advanced civilization has also discovered in Sri Lanka
18.
Maldives
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The Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, is a South Asian island country, located in the Indian Ocean, situated in the Arabian Sea. It lies southwest of India and Sri Lanka, the chain of twenty-six atolls stretches from Ihavandhippolhu Atoll in the north to the Addu City in the south. Malé is the capital and most populated city, traditionally called the Kings Island for its central location. With an average elevation of 1.5 metres above sea level, it is the worlds lowest country, with even its highest natural point being the lowest in the world. Due to the subsequent risks posed by rising sea-levels, the government pledged in 2009 to make the Maldives a carbon-neutral country by 2019, the Maldives have been historically and culturally linked to the Indian subcontinent since the fourth century BCE. The Maldivian archipelago was Islamised in the 12th century and consolidated as a sultanate, developing commercial and cultural ties with Asia. From the mid 16th-century, the region came under the influence of European colonial powers. Independence from the United Kingdom was achieved in 1965 and a republic was established in 1968 with an elected Peoples Majlis. The ensuing decades have been characterised by political instability, efforts at democratic reform, the Maldives is a founding member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. It is also a member of the United Nations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the World Bank classifies the Maldives as having an upper middle income economy. Fishing has historically been the dominant economic activity, and remains the largest sector by far, along with Sri Lanka, it is one of only two South Asian countries rated high on the Human Development Index, with its per capita income the highest among SAARC nations. The name Maldives may derive from the Malayalam words maala and dweepu or the Tamil maalai and theevu, the Maldivian people are called Dhivehin. The word theevu means island, and Dhives means islanders, the ancient Sri Lankan chronicle Mahawamsa refers to an island called Mahiladiva in Pali, which is probably a mistranslation of the same Sanskrit word meaning garland. Jan S Hogendorn, Grossman Professor of Economics, theorises that the name Maldives derives from the Sanskrit mālādvīpa, in Tamil, Garland of Islands can be translated as Malai Theevu. In Malayalam, Garland of Islands can be translated as Maladweepu, in Kannada, Garland of Islands can be translated as Maaledweepa. This is the name inscribed on the scroll in the Maldive state emblem. The classical Persian/Arabic name for Maldives is Dibajat, the Dutch referred to the islands as the Maldivische Eilanden, while the British anglicised the local name for the islands first to the Maldive Islands and later to Maldives. One such community are the Giraavaru people and they are mentioned in ancient legends and local folklore about the establishment of the capital and kingly rule in Malé
19.
Tropics
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The tropics are a region of the Earth surrounding the equator. The tropics are also referred to as the zone and the torrid zone. The tropics include all the areas on the Earth where the Sun is at a point directly overhead at least once during the solar year. The tropics are distinguished from the climatic and biomatic regions of Earth, which are the middle latitudes. Tropical is sometimes used in a sense for a tropical climate to mean warm to hot and moist year-round. Many tropical areas have a dry and wet season, the wet season, rainy season or green season, is the time of year, ranging from one or more months, when most of the average annual rainfall in a region falls. Areas with wet seasons are disseminated across portions of the tropics and subtropics, under the Köppen climate classification, for tropical climates, a wet season month is defined as a month where average precipitation is 60 millimetres or more. Tropical rainforests technically do not have dry or wet seasons, since their rainfall is distributed through the year. When the wet season occurs during the season, or summer, precipitation falls mainly during the late afternoon. The wet season is a time when air quality improves, freshwater quality improves and vegetation grows significantly, floods cause rivers to overflow their banks, and some animals to retreat to higher ground. Soil nutrients diminish and erosion increases, the incidence of malaria increases in areas where the rainy season coincides with high temperatures. Animals have adaptation and survival strategies for the wetter regime, unfortunately, the previous dry season leads to food shortages into the wet season, as the crops have yet to mature. Regions within the tropics may well not have a tropical climate, there are alpine tundra and snow-capped peaks, including Mauna Kea, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the Andes as far south as the northernmost parts of Chile and Argentina. Under the Köppen climate classification, much of the area within the tropics is classed not as tropical but as dry including the Sahara Desert. Tropical plants and animals are those native to the tropics. Tropical ecosystems may consist of rainforests, dry forests, spiny forests, desert. There are often significant areas of biodiversity, and species present, particularly in rainforests. In biogeography, the tropics are divided into Paleotropics and Neotropics, together, they are sometimes referred to as the Pantropic
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Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
21.
Neem oil
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Neem oil is a vegetable oil pressed from the fruits and seeds of the neem, an evergreen tree which is endemic to the Indian subcontinent and has been introduced to many other areas in the tropics. It is the most important of the available products of neem for organic farming. Neem oil varies in color, it can be yellow, yellowish brown, reddish brown, dark brown, greenish brown. It has a strong odor that is said to combine the odours of peanut. It is composed mainly of triglycerides and contains many triterpenoid compounds and it is hydrophobic in nature, in order to emulsify it in water for application purposes, it is formulated with surfactants. Azadirachtin is the most well known and studied triterpenoid in neem oil, the azadirachtin content of neem oil varies from 300ppm to over 2500ppm depending on the extraction technology and quality of the neem seeds crushed. Nimbin is another triterpenoid which has been credited with some of neem oils properties as an antiseptic, antifungal, antipyretic, Neem oil also contains several sterols, including. The neem oil yield that can be obtained from neem seed kernels also varies widely in literature from 25% to 45%, the oil can be obtained through pressing of the seed kernel both through cold pressing or through a process incorporating temperature controls 40 to 50 °C. Neem seed oil can also be obtained by solvent extraction of the seed, fruit, oil. A large industry in India extracts the oil remaining in the cake using hexane. This solvent-extracted oil is of a quality as compared to the cold pressed oil and is mostly used for soap manufacturing. Neem cake is a by-product obtained in the solvent extraction process for neem oil, Neem oil is not used for cooking purposes. In India, it is used for preparing cosmetics and in Ayurvedic, Unani and folklore traditional medicine, the most frequently reported indications in ancient Ayurvedic writings are skin diseases, inflammations and fevers, and more recently rheumatic disorders. Traditional Ayurvedic uses of neem include the treatment of acne, fever, leprosy, malaria, ophthalmia, various folk remedies for neem include use as an anthelmintic, antifeedant, antiseptic, diuretic, emmenagogue, contraceptive, febrifuge, parasiticide, pediculocide and insecticide. It has been used in medicine for the treatment of tetanus, urticaria, eczema, scrofula. Traditional routes of administration of neem extracts included oral, vaginal and topical use, Neem oil has an extensive history of human use in India and surrounding regions for a variety of therapeutic purposes. Puri has given an account of traditional uses and therapeutic indications and pharmacological studies of this oil, Neem seed oil has also been found to prevent implantation and may even have an abortifacient effect similar to pennyroyal, juniper berries, wild ginger, myrrh and angelica. The effects were seen as many as ten days after fertilization in rats though it was most effective at no more than three days, in a study on rats, neem oil was given orally eight to ten days after implantation of the fetus on the uterine wall
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Tree
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In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, supporting branches and leaves in most species. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are usable as lumber or plants above a specified height. Trees are not a group but include a variety of plant species that have independently evolved a woody trunk. In looser senses, the palms, the tree ferns, bananas. Trees tend to be long-lived, some reaching several thousand years old, the tallest known tree, a coast redwood named Hyperion, stands 115.6 m high. Trees have been in existence for 370 million years and it is estimated that there are just over 3 trillion mature trees in the world. A tree typically has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground by the trunk and this trunk typically contains woody tissue for strength, and vascular tissue to carry materials from one part of the tree to another. For most trees it is surrounded by a layer of bark which serves as a protective barrier, below the ground, the roots branch and spread out widely, they serve to anchor the tree and extract moisture and nutrients from the soil. Above ground, the divide into smaller branches and shoots. The shoots typically bear leaves, which light energy and convert it into sugars by photosynthesis, providing the food for the trees growth. Flowers and fruit may also be present, but some trees, such as conifers, instead have pollen cones and seed cones, others, such as tree ferns, trees play a significant role in reducing erosion and moderating the climate. They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store large quantities of carbon in their tissues, trees and forests provide a habitat for many species of animals and plants. Tropical rainforests are one of the most biodiverse habitats in the world, trees provide shade and shelter, timber for construction, fuel for cooking and heating, and fruit for food as well as having many other uses. In parts of the world, forests are shrinking as trees are cleared to increase the amount of available for agriculture. Because of their longevity and usefulness, trees have always revered, with sacred groves in various cultures. Although tree is a term of common parlance, there is no universally recognised precise definition of what a tree is, either botanically or in common language. In its broadest sense, a tree is any plant with the form of an elongated stem, or trunk. Trees are also defined by height, with smaller plants from 0.5 to 10 m being called shrubs
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Evergreen
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In botany, an evergreen is a plant that has leaves throughout the year, always green. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which lose their foliage during the winter or dry season. There are many different kinds of plants, both trees and shrubs. Deciduous trees shed their leaves, usually as an adaptation to a cold or dry/wet season, evergreen trees do lose leaves, but each tree loses its leaves gradually and not all at once. Most warm temperate climate plants are also evergreen, in cool temperate climates, fewer plants are evergreen, with a predominance of conifers, as few evergreen broadleaf plants can tolerate severe cold below about −30 °C. In areas where there is a reason for being deciduous, being evergreen is usually an adaptation to low nutrient levels, deciduous trees lose nutrients whenever they lose their leaves. In warmer areas, species such as pines and cypresses grow on poor soils. In Rhododendron, a genus with many broadleaf evergreens, several species grow in forests but are usually found on highly acidic soil where the nutrients are less available to plants. In taiga or boreal forests, it is too cold for the matter in the soil to decay rapidly, so the nutrients in the soil are less easily available to plants. These conditions favour the growth of more evergreens and make it difficult for deciduous plants to persist. In addition, the shelter provided by existing evergreen plants can make it easier for younger evergreen plants to survive cold and/or drought
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Drought
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A drought is a period of below-average precipitation in a given region, resulting in prolonged shortages in its water supply, whether atmospheric, surface water or ground water. A drought can last for months or years, or may be declared after as few as 15 days and it can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region and harm to the local economy. Annual dry seasons in the tropics significantly increase the chances of a drought developing, periods of heat can significantly worsen drought conditions by hastening evaporation of water vapour. Many plant species, such as those in the family Cactaceae, have drought tolerance adaptations like reduced leaf area, some others survive dry periods as buried seeds. Semi-permanent drought produces arid biomes such as deserts and grasslands, prolonged droughts have caused mass migrations and humanitarian crises. Most arid ecosystems have inherently low productivity, the most prolonged drought ever in the world in recorded history occurred in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Mechanisms of producing precipitation include convective, stratiform, and orographic rainfall, precipitation can be divided into three categories, based on whether it falls as liquid water, liquid water that freezes on contact with the surface, or ice. Drought are mainly course by in low rain areas, if these factors do not support precipitation volumes sufficient to reach the surface over a sufficient time, the result is a drought. Once a region is within drought, feedback mechanisms such as local arid air, hot conditions which can promote warm core ridging, within the tropics, distinct, wet and dry seasons emerge due to the movement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone or Monsoon trough. The dry season greatly increases drought occurrence, and is characterized by its low humidity, with watering holes, because of the lack of these watering holes, many grazing animals are forced to migrate due to the lack of water and feed to more fertile spots. Examples of such animals are zebras, elephants, and wildebeest, because of the lack of water in the plants, bushfires are common. Since water vapor becomes more energetic with increasing temperature, more water vapor is required to increase relative humidity values to 100% at higher temperatures, periods of warmth quicken the pace of fruit and vegetable production, increase evaporation and transpiration from plants, and worsen drought conditions. Drier and hotter weather occurs in parts of the Amazon River Basin, Colombia, winters during the El Niño are warmer and drier than average conditions in the Northwest, northern Midwest, and northern Mideast United States, so those regions experience reduced snowfalls. Conditions are also drier than normal from December to February in south-central Africa, mainly in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Botswana. Direct effects of El Niño resulting in drier conditions occur in parts of Southeast Asia and Northern Australia, increasing bush fires, worsening haze, drier-than-normal conditions are also in general observed in Queensland, inland Victoria, inland New South Wales, and eastern Tasmania from June to August. As warm water spreads from the west Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the east Pacific, it causes extensive drought in the western Pacific. Singapore experienced the driest February in 2014 since records began in 1869, with only 6.3 mm of rain falling in the month, the years 1968 and 2005 had the next driest Februaries, when 8.4 mm of rain fell. Human activity can directly trigger exacerbating factors such as farming, excessive irrigation, deforestation
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Melia azedarach
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The adult tree has a rounded crown, and commonly measures 7–12 metres tall, however in exceptional circumstances M. azedarach can attain a height of 45 metres. The leaves are up to 50 centimetres long, alternate, long-petioled, the flowers are small and fragrant, with five pale purple or lilac petals, growing in clusters. The fruit is a drupe, marble-sized, light yellow at maturity, hanging on the tree all winter, Melia azedarach should not be confused with the Azadirachta trees, which are in the same family, but a different genus. Names in other languages include malai vembu, bakain, zanzalakht, dharek or dhraik, ghora neem, hebbevu in Kannada, Shandai in Pashto, vilayati neem in Bundelkhand, and bkain in Haryana, Rajasthan, East Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand, India. It has been naturalized in Madagascar, where it is called voandelaka, the main utility of chinaberry is its timber. This is of density, and ranges in colour from light brown to dark red. In appearance it is confused with the unrelated Burmese teak. Melia azedarach – in keeping with other members of the family Meliaceae – has a timber of high quality, seasoning is relatively simple, in that planks dry without cracking or warping and are resistant to fungal infection. The taste of the leaves is not as bitter as neem, the hard, five-grooved seeds were widely used for making rosaries and other products requiring beads, however, the seeds were later replaced by plastics. The cut branches with mature fruit are sold commercially to the florist, the fruits may persist for some time prior to shattering off the stem or discoloring, which occurs rapidly after a relatively short time in subfreezing weather. In Kenya the trees have grown by farmers and used as fodder trees. The leaves can be fed to cattle to improve milk yields, fruits are poisonous to humans if eaten in quantity. However, like those of the yew tree, these toxins are not harmful to birds, the birds that are able to eat the fruit spread the seeds in their droppings. The toxins are neurotoxins and unidentified resins, found mainly in the fruits, the first symptoms of poisoning appear a few hours after ingestion. They may include loss of appetite, vomiting, constipation or diarrhea, bloody faeces, stomach pain, pulmonary congestion, cardiac arrest, rigidity, lack of coordination, death may take place after about 24 hours. Like in relatives, tetranortriterpenoids constitute an important toxic principle and these are chemically related to azadirachtin, the primary insecticidal compound in the commercially important neem oil. These compounds are related to the wood and seeds resistance to pest infestation. Leaves have been used as an insecticide to keep with stored food
26.
Pinnation
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Pinnation is the arrangement of feather-like or multi-divided features arising from both sides of a common axis. Pinnation occurs in biological morphology, in crystals, such as forms of ice or metal crystals. The term derives from the Latin word pinna meaning feather, wing, a similar concept is pectination, which is a comb-like arrangement of parts. Pinnation is commonly referred to in contrast to palmation, in which the parts or structures radiate out from a common point. The terms pinnation and pennation are cognate, and although they are used distinctly. Botanically, pinnation is an arrangement of structures arising at multiple points along a common axis. For example, once-divided leaf blades having leaflets arranged on both sides of a rachis are pinnately compound leaves, many palms and most cycads and grevilleas have pinnately divided leaves. Most species of ferns have pinnate or more highly divided fronds, plants with pinnate leaves are sometimes colloquially called feather-leaved. Pinnatisect, cut all the way to the midrib or other axis, pinnate-pinnatifid, pinnate, with the pinnae being pinnatifid. Paripinnate, pinnately compound leaves in which leaflets are born in pairs along the rachis without a terminal leaflet. Imparipinnate, pinnately compound leaves in which there is a terminal leaflet rather than a terminal pair of leaflets. Bipinnate, pinnately compound leaves in which the leaflets are themselves pinnately compound, tripinnate, pinnately compound leaves in which the leaflets are themselves bipinnate, also called thrice-pinnate. Tetrapinnate, pinnately compound leaves in which the leaflets are themselves tripinnate, unipinnate, solitary compound leaf with a row of leaflets arranged along each side of a common rachis. The term pinnula is the Latin diminutive of pinna, either as such or in the Anglicised form, pinnule, some apply it to the leaflets of a pinna, especially the leaflets of bipinnate or tripinnate leaves. Others also or alternatively apply it second or third divisions of a bipinnate or tripinnate leaf. It is the ultimate division of a compound leaf, or a pinnate subdivision of a multipinnate leaf. Pinnation occurs in certain systems in which all major tributary streams enter the main channels by flowing in one direction at an oblique angle
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Petiole (botany)
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In botany, the petiole is the stalk that attaches the leaf blade to the stem. The petiole is the transition between the stem and the leaf blade, outgrowths appearing on each side of the petiole in some species are called stipules. Leaves lacking a petiole are called sessile or epetiolate, the petiole is a stalk that attaches a leaf to the plant stem. In petiolate leaves, the stalk may be long, as in the leaves of celery and rhubarb, short or completely absent. Subpetiolate leaves are petiolate, or have an extremely short petiole. The broomrape family Orobanchaceae is an example of a family in which the leaves are always sessile, in some other plant groups, such as the speedwell genus Veronica, petiolate and sessile leaves may occur in different species. In the grasses the leaves are apetiolate, but the blade may be narrowed at the junction with the leaf sheath to form a pseudopetiole. In plants with leaves, the leaflets are attached to a continuation of the petiole called the rachis. Each leaflet may be attached to the rachis by a stalk called the petiolule. There may be swollen regions at either end of the known as pulvina that are composed of a flexible tissue that allows leaf movement. Pulvina are common in the bean family Fabaceae and the plant family Marantaceae. A pulvinus on a petiolule is called a pulvinulus, in some plants, the petioles are flattened and widened, to become phyllodes or phyllodia, or cladophylls and the true leaves may be reduced or absent. Thus, the comes to serve the functions of the leaf. Phyllodes are common in the genus Acacia, especially the Australian species, in Acacia koa, the phyllodes are leathery and thick, allowing the tree to survive stressful environments. The petiole allows partially submerged hydrophytes to have leaves floating at different depths, in plants such as rhubarb, celery, artichokes and cardoons the petioles are cultivated as edible crops. The petiole of rhubarb grows directly from the rhizome and produces the leaf at its end, botanically it is categorized as a vegetable and culinarily used as a fruit. Petiole is pronounced /ˈpiːtᵻoʊl/ and comes from Latin petiolus, or peciolus little foot, stem, the regular diminutive pediculus is also used for foot stalk
28.
Flower
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A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in plants that are floral. The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs, Flowers may facilitate outcrossing or allow selfing. Some flowers produce diaspores without fertilization, Flowers contain sporangia and are the site where gametophytes develop. Many flowers have evolved to be attractive to animals, so as to them to be vectors for the transfer of pollen. After fertilization, the ovary of the flower develops into fruit containing seeds, the essential parts of a flower can be considered in two parts, the vegetative part, consisting of petals and associated structures in the perianth, and the reproductive or sexual parts. A stereotypical flower consists of four kinds of structures attached to the tip of a short stalk, each of these kinds of parts is arranged in a whorl on the receptacle. The four main whorls are as follows, Collectively the calyx, corolla, the next whorl toward the apex, composed of units called petals, which are typically thin, soft and colored to attract animals that help the process of pollination. Androecium, the whorl, consisting of units called stamens. Stamens consist of two parts, a called a filament, topped by an anther where pollen is produced by meiosis. Gynoecium, the innermost whorl of a flower, consisting of one or more units called carpels, the carpel or multiple fused carpels form a hollow structure called an ovary, which produces ovules internally. Ovules are megasporangia and they in turn produce megaspores by meiosis which develop into female gametophytes and these give rise to egg cells. The gynoecium of a flower is described using an alternative terminology wherein the structure one sees in the innermost whorl is called a pistil. A pistil may consist of a carpel or a number of carpels fused together. The sticky tip of the pistil, the stigma, is the receptor of pollen, the supportive stalk, the style, becomes the pathway for pollen tubes to grow from pollen grains adhering to the stigma. The relationship to the gynoecium on the receptacle is described as hypogynous, perigynous, although the arrangement described above is considered typical, plant species show a wide variation in floral structure. These modifications have significance in the evolution of flowering plants and are used extensively by botanists to establish relationships among plant species, the four main parts of a flower are generally defined by their positions on the receptacle and not by their function. Many flowers lack some parts or parts may be modified into other functions and/or look like what is typically another part, in some families, like Ranunculaceae, the petals are greatly reduced and in many species the sepals are colorful and petal-like. Other flowers have modified stamens that are petal-like, the flowers of Peonies and Roses are mostly petaloid stamens
29.
Axillary bud
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The axillary bud is an embryonic shoot located in the axil of a leaf. Each bud has the potential to form shoots, and may be specialized in producing either vegetative shoots or reproductive shoots, once formed, a bud may remain dormant for some time, or it may form a shoot immediately. An axillary bud is a shoot which lies dormant at the junction of the stem. It arises exogenously from outer layer of cortex of the stem, axillary bud do not become actively growing shoots on plants with strong apical dominance. Apical dominance occurs because the shoot apical meristem produces auxin which prevents axillary buds from growing, axillary buds can be used to differentiate if the plant is single-leafed or multi-leafed. Simply count the number of leaves after an axillary bud, if there is only one leaf, then the plant is considered single-leafed, if not it is considered multi-leafed. An example of axillary buds are the eyes of the potato, as the apical meristem grows and forms leaves, it leaves behind a region of meristematic cells at the node between the stem and the leaf. These axillary buds are usually dormant, inhibited by auxin produced by the apical meristem, if the apical meristem is removed, or has grown a sufficient distance away from an axillary bud, the axillary bud may become activated. Like the apical meristem, axillary buds can develop into a stem or flower, certain plant diseases - notably phytoplasmas - can cause the proliferation of axillary buds, and cause plants to become bushy in appearance
30.
Panicle
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A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. Some authors distinguish it from a spike, by requiring that the flowers be pedicellate. The branches of a panicle are often racemes, a panicle may have determinate or indeterminate growth. This type of inflorescence is largely characteristic of such as oat and crabgrass, as well as other plants such as pistachio. Botanists use the term paniculate in two ways, having a true panicle inflorescence as well as having an inflorescence with the form but not necessarily the structure of a panicle. A corymb may have a branching structure, with the lower flowers having longer pedicels than the upper. Many species in the Maloideae, such as hawthorns and rowans, thyrse, a branched inflorescence where the main axis has indeterminate growth, and the branches have determinate growth
31.
Inflorescence
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An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed. Inflorescence can also be defined as the portion of a plant that bears a cluster of flowers in a specific pattern. The stem holding the whole inflorescence is called a peduncle and the major axis holding the flowers or more branches within the inflorescence is called the rachis, the stalk of each single flower is called a pedicel. A flower that is not part of an inflorescence is called a solitary flower, any flower in an inflorescence may be referred to as a floret, especially when the individual flowers are particularly small and borne in a tight cluster, such as in a pseudanthium. The fruiting stage of an inflorescence is known as an infructescence, inflorescences may be simple or complex. The rachis may be one of several types, including Single, Composite, Umbel and these terms are general representations as plants in nature can have a combination of types. Inflorescences usually have modified shoots foliage different from the part of the plant. Considering the broadest meaning of the term, any leaf associated with an inflorescence is called a bract. A bract is usually located at the node where the stem of the inflorescence forms, joined to the main stem of the plant. They serve a variety of functions which include attracting pollinators and protecting young flowers, according to the presence or absence of bracts and their characteristics we can distinguish, Ebracteate inflorescences, No bracts in the inflorescence. Bracteate inflorescences, The bracts in the inflorescence are very specialised, sometimes reduced to small scales and this use is not technically correct, as, despite their normal appearance, these leaves are considered, in fact, bracts, so that leafy inflorescence is preferable. Leafy-bracted inflorescences, Intermediate between bracteate and leafy inflorescence, if many bracts are present and they are strictly connected to the stem, like in the family Asteraceae, the bracts might collectively be called an involucre. If the inflorescence has a unit of bracts further up the stem. Plant organs can grow according to two different schemes, namely monopodial or racemose and sympodial or cymose, the terminal bud keeps growing and forming lateral flowers. A terminal flower is never formed, the terminal bud forms a terminal flower and then dies out. Other flowers then grow from lateral buds, indeterminate and determinate inflorescences are sometimes referred to as open and closed inflorescences respectively. In an indeterminate inflorescence there is no true terminal flower and the stem usually has a rudimentary end, in many cases the last true flower formed by the terminal bud straightens up, appearing to be a terminal flower
32.
Sequential hermaphroditism
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Sequential hermaphroditism is a type of hermaphroditism that occurs in many fish, gastropoda and plants. Sequential hermaphroditism occurs when the individual changes sex at some point in its life and they can change from a male to female, or from female to male or from female to hermaphrodite, or from male to hermaphrodite. Those that change gonadal sex can have both female and male germ cells in the gonads or can change from one complete gonadal type to the other during their last life stage. Individual flowers are also called sequentially hermaphrodite, although the plant as a whole may have functionally male, protandrous hermaphrodites refer to organisms that are born male and at some point in their lifespan change sex to female. Clownfish have a structured society. In the Amphiprion percula species, there are zero to four individuals excluded from breeding, dominance is based on size, the female being the largest and the male being the second largest. The rest of the group is made up of progressively smaller non-breeders, if the female dies, the male gains weight and becomes the female for that group. The largest non-breeding fish then sexually matures and becomes the male of the group, other protandrous fishes can be found in the classes clupeiformes, siluriformes, stomiiformes, and within the perciform families pomacentridae and sparidae. Since these groups are related and have many intermediate relatives that are not protandrous. Other examples of animals include, The ctenophore Coeloplana gonoctena. In this organism the females are bigger than the males and are found during the summer. In contrast males are found year round, the flatworms Hymanella retenuova and Paravortex cardii. Laevapex fuscus, a gastropod, is described as being functionally protandric, the sperm matures in late winter and early spring, and the eggs mature in early summer, and copulation occurs only in June. This shows that males cannot reproduce until the females appear, thus why they are considered to be functionally protandric, protogynous hermaphrodites refer to organisms that are born female and at some point in their lifespan change sex to male. As the animal ages, based on internal or external triggers, male fecundity increases greatly with age, unlike female. Protogyny is the most common form of hermaphroditism in fish in nature, about 75% of the 500 known sequentially hermaphroditic fish species are protogynous. Common model organisms for this type of sequential hermaphroditism are wrasses and they are one of the largest families of coral reef fish and belong to the Labridae family. Wrasses are found around the world in all habitats and tend to bury themselves in sand at night or when they feel threatened
33.
Fruit
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In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate seeds, accordingly, fruits account for a substantial fraction of the worlds agricultural output, and some have acquired extensive cultural and symbolic meanings. On the other hand, in usage, fruit includes many structures that are not commonly called fruits, such as bean pods, corn kernels, tomatoes. The section of a fungus that produces spores is called a fruiting body. Many common terms for seeds and fruit do not correspond to the botanical classifications, however, in botany, a fruit is the ripened ovary or carpel that contains seeds, a nut is a type of fruit and not a seed, and a seed is a ripened ovule. Examples of culinary vegetables and nuts that are botanically fruit include corn, cucurbits, eggplant, legumes, sweet pepper, in addition, some spices, such as allspice and chili pepper, are fruits, botanically speaking. g. Botanically, a grain, such as corn, rice, or wheat, is also a kind of fruit. However, the wall is very thin and is fused to the seed coat. The outer, often edible layer, is the pericarp, formed from the ovary and surrounding the seeds, the pericarp may be described in three layers from outer to inner, the epicarp, mesocarp and endocarp. Fruit that bears a prominent pointed terminal projection is said to be beaked, a fruit results from maturation of one or more flowers, and the gynoecium of the flower forms all or part of the fruit. Inside the ovary/ovaries are one or more ovules where the megagametophyte contains the egg cell, after double fertilization, these ovules will become seeds. The ovules are fertilized in a process starts with pollination. After pollination, a tube grows from the pollen through the stigma into the ovary to the ovule, later the zygote will give rise to the embryo of the seed, and the endosperm mother cell will give rise to endosperm, a nutritive tissue used by the embryo. As the ovules develop into seeds, the ovary begins to ripen and the ovary wall, in some multiseeded fruits, the extent to which the flesh develops is proportional to the number of fertilized ovules. The pericarp is often differentiated into two or three distinct layers called the exocarp, mesocarp, and endocarp, in some fruits, especially simple fruits derived from an inferior ovary, other parts of the flower, fuse with the ovary and ripen with it. In other cases, the sepals, petals and/or stamens and style of the fall off. When such other floral parts are a significant part of the fruit, it is called an accessory fruit, since other parts of the flower may contribute to the structure of the fruit, it is important to study flower structure to understand how a particular fruit forms. There are three modes of fruit development, Apocarpous fruits develop from a single flower having one or more separate carpels
34.
Glabrousness
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Glabrousness is the technical term for a lack of hair, down, setae, trichomes or other such covering. Humans may also remove some or all of their body hair for a variety of cultural reasons. Glabrousness or otherwise, of leaves, stems, and fruit is a feature mentioned in plant keys, in botany and mycology. It has no bristles or hair-like structures such as trichomes, in anything like the zoological sense, no plants or fungi have hair or wool, although some structures may resemble such materials. The term glabrous strictly applies only to features that lack trichomes at all times, when an organ bears trichomes at first, but loses them with age, the term used is glabrescent. In varying degrees most mammals have some areas without natural hair. There are four types of mechanoreceptors in the glabrous skin of humans, Pacinian corpuscles, Meissners corpuscles, Merkels discs. The Naked mole-rat has evolved skin lacking in general, pelagic hair covering, yet has retained long, glabrousness is a trait that may be associated with neoteny. Within entomology, the term glabrous is used to refer to parts of an insects body with are lacking in setae or scales. Recently, the term also has been applied to human fashions, wherein some participate in culturally motivated hair removal by depilation. In many Western cultures, men currently are encouraged to shave their beards, commonly depilated areas for women are the underarms and legs. Pubic hair may be removed partially or entirely, in recent years, bodily depilation in men has increased in popularity among some subcultures of Western males. As with any practice, the particulars of hair removal have changed over the years. Western female depilation has been influenced by the evolution of clothing in the past century. Leg and underarm shaving became popular again in Western society with the advent of off-the-shoulder dresses, higher hemlines, the reduction of the minimum acceptable standards for bodily coverage over recent years has resulted in the exposure of more flesh, giving rise to more extensive hair removal. Encouragement by commercial interests may be seen in advertising, at present, this has resulted in the Brazilian waxing trend involving the partial or full removal of pubic hair, as the thongs worn on Brazilian beaches are too small to conceal very much of it. Indeed, a culture is now emerging around intimate shaving and other hair removal options geared specifically toward pubic hair, what was once kept a personal secret now is discussed more openly, although still in carefully non-explicit language, as advertised in magazines and on television. In ancient Egypt, depilation was commonly practiced, with pumice, in both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, the removal of body and pubic hair may have been practiced among both men and women
35.
Drupe
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In botany, a drupe is an indehiscent fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a shell of hardened endocarp with a seed inside. These fruits usually develop from a carpel, and mostly from flowers with superior ovaries. Other fleshy fruits may have an enclosure that comes from the seed coat surrounding the seed. The term drupaceous is applied to a fruit which has the structure and texture of a drupe, the boundary between a drupe and a berry is not always clear. Thus some sources describe the fruit of species of the genus Persea, one definition of berry requires the endocarp to be less than 2 mm thick, other fruits with a stony endocarp being drupes. In marginal cases, terms such as drupaceous or drupe-like may be used, the term stone fruit can be a synonym for drupe or, more typically, it can mean just the fruit of the genus Prunus. Freestone refers to a drupe having a stone which can be removed from the flesh with ease, the flesh is not attached to the stone and does not need to be cut to free the stone. Freestone varieties of fruits are preferred for uses that require removal of the stone. Freestone plums are preferred for making homegrown prunes, and freestone sour cherries are preferred for making pies, clingstone refers to a drupe having a stone which cannot easily be removed from the flesh. The flesh is attached strongly to the stone and must be cut to free the stone, clingstone varieties of fruits in the genus Prunus are preferred as table fruit and for jams, because the flesh of clingstone fruits tends to be more tender and juicy throughout. Tryma is a term for such nut-like drupes that are difficult to categorize. Hickory nuts and walnuts in the Juglandaceae family grow within a husk, these fruits are technically drupes or drupaceous nuts. Many drupes, with their sweet, fleshy outer layer, attract the attention of animals as a food, and the plant population benefits from the resulting dispersal of its seeds. The endocarp is sometimes dropped after the part is eaten, but is often swallowed, passing through the digestive tract. This passage through the tract can reduce the thickness of the endocarp. The process is known as scarification, typical drupes include apricots, olives, peaches, plums, cherries, mangoes and amlas. The coconut is also a drupe, but the mesocarp is fibrous or dry, so this type of fruit is classified as a simple dry, unlike other drupes, the coconut seed is unlikely to be dispersed by being swallowed by fauna, due to its large size. It can, however, float extremely long distances across oceans, bramble fruits are aggregates of drupelets
36.
Seed
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A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering. The formation of the seed is part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, Seeds are the product of the ripened ovule, after fertilization by pollen and some growth within the mother plant. The embryo is developed from the zygote and the coat from the integuments of the ovule. Seed plants now dominate biological niches on land, from forests to both in hot and cold climates. The term seed also has a meaning that antedates the above—anything that can be sown, e. g. seed potatoes. In the case of sunflower and corn seeds, what is sown is the seed enclosed in a shell or husk, many structures commonly referred to as seeds are actually dry fruits. Plants producing berries are called baccate, sunflower seeds are sometimes sold commercially while still enclosed within the hard wall of the fruit, which must be split open to reach the seed. Different groups of plants have other modifications, the stone fruits have a hardened fruit layer fused to. Nuts are the one-seeded, hard-shelled fruit of plants with an indehiscent seed. Seeds are produced in several related groups of plants, and their manner of production distinguishes the angiosperms from the gymnosperms, angiosperm seeds are produced in a hard or fleshy structure called a fruit that encloses the seeds, hence the name. Some fruits have layers of hard and fleshy material. In gymnosperms, no special structure develops to enclose the seeds, however, the seeds do become covered by the cone scales as they develop in some species of conifer. Seed production in natural plant populations varies widely from year-to-year in response to weather variables, insects and diseases, over a 20-year period, for example, forests composed of loblolly pine and shortleaf pine produced from 0 to nearly 5 million sound pine seeds per hectare. Over this period, there were six bumper, five poor, and nine good seed crops, right after fertilization, the zygote is mostly inactive, but the primary endosperm divides rapidly to form the endosperm tissue. This tissue becomes the food the young plant will consume until the roots have developed after germination, after fertilization the ovules develop into the seeds. The ovule consists of a number of components, The funicle or seed stalk which attaches the ovule to the placenta and hence ovary or fruit wall, the nucellus, the remnant of the megasporangium and main region of the ovule where the megagametophyte develops. The micropyle, a pore or opening in the apex of the integument of the ovule where the pollen tube usually enters during the process of fertilization. The chalaza, the base of the ovule opposite the micropyle, the shape of the ovules as they develop often affects the final shape of the seeds
37.
Hindi
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Hindi, or Modern Standard Hindi is a standardised and Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language. Along with the English language, Hindi written in the Devanagari script, is the language of the Government of India. It is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India, Hindi is the lingua franca of the so-called Hindi belt of India. Outside India, it is a language which is known as Fiji Hindi in Fiji, and is a recognised regional language in Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana. Hindi is the fourth most-spoken first language in the world, after Mandarin, apart from specialized vocabulary, Hindi is mutually intelligible with Standard Urdu, another recognized register of Hindustani. Part XVII of the Indian Constitution deals with Official Language, under Article 343, official language of the Union has been prescribed, which includes Hindi in Devanagari script and English. Gujarat High Court, in 2010, has observed that there was nothing on record to suggest that any provision has been made or order issued declaring Hindi as a language of India. Article 343 of the Indian constitution states The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script, the form of numerals to be used for the official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals. It was envisioned that Hindi would become the working language of the Union Government by 1965. Each may also designate a co-official language, in Uttar Pradesh, for instance, depending on the formation in power. Similarly, Hindi is accorded the status of language in the following Union Territories, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu. National-language status for Hindi is a long-debated theme, an Indian court clarified that Hindi is not the national language of India because the constitution does not mention it as such. Outside Asia, Hindi is a language in Fiji as per the 1997 Constitution of Fiji. It is spoken by 380,000 people in Fiji, Hindi is also spoken by a large population of Madheshis of Nepal. Hindi is quite easy to understand for some Pakistanis, who speak Urdu, apart from this, Hindi is spoken by the large Indian diaspora which hails from, or has its origin from the Hindi Belt of India. Like other Indo-Aryan languages, Hindi is considered to be a descendant of an early form of Sanskrit, through Sauraseni Prakrit. It has been influenced by Dravidian languages, Turkic languages, Persian, Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi emerged as Apabhramsha, a degenerated form of Prakrit, in the 7th century A. D. By the 10th century A. D. it became stable, Braj Bhasha, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Khari Boli etc. are the dialects of Hindi
38.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
39.
Drought tolerance
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Drought tolerance refers to the degree to which a plant is adapted to arid or drought conditions. Desiccation tolerance is a degree of drought tolerance. Plants naturally adapted to dry conditions are called xerophytes, drought tolerant plants typically make use of either C4 carbon fixation or crassulacean acid metabolism to fix carbon during photosynthesis. Both are improvements over the common but more basal C3 pathway in that they are more energy efficient. CAM is particularly good for arid conditions because carbon dioxide can be taken up at night, allowing the stomata to stay closed during the heat of the day and thus reducing water loss. Many adaptations for dry conditions are structural, including the following, Adaptations of the stomata to reduce water loss, water storage in succulent above-ground parts or water-filled tubers. Adaptations in the system to increase water absorption. Trichomes on the leaves to absorb atmospheric water, arid conditions can lower the yield of many crops. Plant breeding programs for improved yield during drought conditions have great importance. In landscapes in arid or drought-prone regions, drought tolerance is an important consideration in plant selection, xeriscaping is an approach to landscaping first developed in Denver, Colorado, a region with hot, dry summers. The use of drought tolerant plants is essential to a successful xeriscape, which ideally requires no supplemental irrigation
40.
Groundwater
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Groundwater is the water present beneath Earths surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. A unit of rock or a deposit is called an aquifer when it can yield a usable quantity of water. The depth at which pore spaces or fractures and voids in rock become completely saturated with water is called the water table. Groundwater is recharged from, and eventually flows to, the naturally, natural discharge often occurs at springs and seeps. Groundwater is also withdrawn for agricultural, municipal, and industrial use by constructing and operating extraction wells. The study of the distribution and movement of groundwater is hydrogeology, Groundwater is hypothesized to provide lubrication that can possibly influence the movement of faults. It is likely that much of Earths subsurface contains some water, Groundwater may not be confined only to Earth. The formation of some of the landforms observed on Mars may have influenced by groundwater. There is also evidence that water may also exist in the subsurface of Jupiters moon Europa. Groundwater is often cheaper, more convenient and less vulnerable to pollution than surface water, therefore, it is commonly used for public water supplies. For example, groundwater provides the largest source of water storage in the United States. Underground reservoirs contain far more water than the capacity of all surface reservoirs and lakes in the US, many municipal water supplies are derived solely from groundwater. Polluted groundwater is less visible, but more difficult to clean up, than pollution in rivers, Groundwater pollution most often results from improper disposal of wastes on land. An aquifer is a layer of substrate that contains and transmits groundwater. When water can flow directly between the surface and the zone of an aquifer, the aquifer is unconfined. The deeper parts of unconfined aquifers are more saturated since gravity causes water to flow downward. The upper level of this layer of an unconfined aquifer is called the water table or phreatic surface. Below the water table, where in general all pore spaces are saturated with water, is the phreatic zone, substrate with low porosity that permits limited transmission of groundwater is known as an aquitard
41.
Soil
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Soil is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, liquids, and countless organisms that together support life on Earth. Soil is called the Skin of the Earth and interfaces with the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, the term pedolith, used commonly to refer to the soil, literally translates ground stone. Soil consists of a phase of minerals and organic matter, as well as a porous phase that holds gases. Accordingly, soils are often treated as a system of solids, liquids. Soil is a product of the influence of climate, relief, organisms, Soil continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness soil has been considered as an ecosystem by soil ecologists. Most soils have a dry bulk density between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cm3, while the particle density is much higher. Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, Soil science has two basic branches of study, edaphology and pedology. Edaphology is concerned with the influence of soils on living things, pedology is focused on the formation, description, and classification of soils in their natural environment. In engineering terms, soil is referred to as regolith, or loose material that lies above the solid geology. Soil is commonly referred to as earth or dirt, technically, as soil resources serve as a basis for food security, the international community advocates its sustainable and responsible use through different types of soil governance. Soil is a component of the Earths ecosystem. The worlds ecosystems are impacted in far-reaching ways by the carried out in the soil, from ozone depletion and global warming, to rainforest destruction. Following the atmosphere, the soil is the next largest carbon reservoir on Earth, as the planet warms, soils will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere due to its increased biological activity at higher temperatures. Thus, soil carbon losses likely have a positive feedback response to global warming. Since soil has a range of available niches and habitats. A gram of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial, Soil has a mean prokaryotic density of roughly 108 organisms per gram, whereas the ocean has no more than 107 procaryotic organisms per milliliter of seawater. Since plant roots need oxygen, ventilation is an important characteristic of soil and this ventilation can be accomplished via networks of interconnected soil pores, which also absorb and hold rainwater making it readily available for plant uptake
42.
Non-resident Indian and person of Indian origin
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A Person of Indian Origin is a person of Indian origin or ancestry but who is not a citizen of India and is the citizen of another country. A PIO might have been a citizen of India and subsequently taken the citizenship of another country, other terms with vaguely the same meaning are overseas Indian and expatriate Indian. In common usage, this often includes India-born individuals who have taken the citizenship of other countries, according to a survey conducted by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, India has the largest diaspora population in the world. The rates of tax are different for persons who are resident in India. For the purposes of the Income Tax Act, residence in India requires stay in India of at least 182 days in a year or 365 days spread out over four consecutive years. According to the act, any Indian citizen who does not meet the criteria as a resident of India is a non-resident of India and is treated as NRI for paying income tax, the prohibited list periodically includes China and Iran as well. The government issues a PIO Card to a PIO after verification of his or her origin or ancestry, the spouse of a PIO can also be issued a PIO card though the spouse might not be a PIO. This latter category includes foreign spouses of Indian nationals, regardless of origin, so long as they were not born in, or ever nationals of. PIO Cards exempt holders from many restrictions that apply to nationals, such as visa and work permit requirements. Another major emigration from the subcontinent was to Southeast Asia, there is possibility that the first wave of Indians migration towards Southeast Asia happened when the Emperor Ashoka invasion towards Kalinga and Samudraguptas expedition towards the South. It followed by interaction of Indian traders and, after mid-first millennium CE. This resulted in the establishment of the so-called Indianised kingdoms in Southeast Asia, the Cholas, who were known for their naval power, conquered Sumatra and Malay Peninsula. The influence of Indian culture is strongly felt in Southeast Asia, for example with the royal Brahmins of Thailand. In such cases, it is not reasonable to apply the label PIO to the descendants of emigrants from several centuries back, intermixture has been so great as to negate the value of such nomenclature in this context. The modern Indian merchant diaspora in Central Asia and Arabia emerged in the mid-16th century, astrakhan at the mouth of the Volga was the first place in Tsardom of Russia where an Indian merchant colony was established as early as the 1610s. Russian chroniclers reported the presence of Hindu traders in Moscow and St Petersburg in the 18th century, multani people from Multan, Shikarpur, and Mawar of both Hindu and Muslim background acted as bankers and merchants in Safavid Persia. Hindu merchants in Hamadan were massacred by Ottomans as stated by an Armenian, with the Indian merchant community plummeting due to the Ottoma, in Kerman traders of Hindu background had a caravanserai. Traders of Indian background were mentioned by Jean Chardin, Jean de Thévenot, Adam Olearius and F. A. Kotov in Safavid era Persian where they lived along with Jews, traders from India of Sikh and Hindu background lived in Qajar era Persia and Zand era Persia
43.
Weed
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A weed is a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation, a plant in the wrong place. Examples commonly are plants unwanted in human-controlled settings, such as fields, gardens, lawns. Many plants that people widely regard as weeds also are grown in gardens and other cultivated settings. The term weed also is applied to any plant that grows or reproduces aggressively, Weed control is important in agriculture. Methods include hand cultivation with hoes, powered cultivation with cultivators, smothering with mulch, lethal wilting with high heat, burning, certain classes of weeds share adaptations to ruderal environments. The nature of the habitat and its disturbances will affect or even determine which types of weed communities become dominant. In contrast, perennial weeds often have underground stems that spread under the surface or, like ground ivy, have creeping stems that root. In locations where predation and mutually competitive relationships are absent, weeds have increased resources available for growth and these chemicals may limit the growth of established plants or the germination and growth of seeds and seedlings. A number of native or non-native plants are unwanted in a location for a number of reasons. An important one is that they interfere with food and fiber production in agriculture, other important reasons are that they interfere with other cosmetic, decorative, or recreational goals, such as in lawns, landscape architecture, playing fields, and golf courses. Similarly, they can be of concern for environmental reasons whereby introduced species out-compete for resources or space with desired endemic plants, in weed ecology some authorities speak of the relationship between the three Ps, plant, place, perception. These have been variously defined, but the weed traits listed by H. G. Baker are widely cited. Weeds have long been a concern, perhaps as long as humans have cultivated plants, and the Bible, Cursed is the ground because of you, through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, While the term weed generally has a negative connotation, many plants known as weeds can have beneficial properties. A number of weeds, such as the dandelion and lambs quarter, are edible, burdock is common over much of the world, and is sometimes used to make soup and medicine in East Asia. Some weeds attract beneficial insects, which in turn can protect crops from harmful pests, Weeds can also prevent pest insects from finding a crop, because their presence disrupts the incidence of positive cues which pests use to locate their food. Weeds may also act as a mulch, providing ground cover that reduces moisture loss
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Middle East
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The Middle East is a transcontinental region centered on Western Asia and Egypt. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the noun is Middle-Easterner. The term has come into usage as a replacement of the term Near East beginning in the early 20th century. Arabs, Turks, Persians, Kurds, and Azeris constitute the largest ethnic groups in the region by population. Indigenous minorities of the Middle East include Jews, Assyrians and other Arameans, Baloch, Berbers, Copts, Druze, Lurs, Mandaeans, Samaritans, Shabaks, Tats, in the Middle East, there is also a Romani community. European ethnic groups form a diaspora in the region include Albanians, Bosniaks, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, Franco-Levantines. Among other migrant populations are Bengalis as well as other Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Pakistanis, the history of the Middle East dates back to ancient times, with the importance of the region being recognized for millennia. Most of the countries border the Persian Gulf have vast reserves of crude oil. The term Middle East may have originated in the 1850s in the British India Office, however, it became more widely known when American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan used the term in 1902 to designate the area between Arabia and India. During this time the British and Russian Empires were vying for influence in Central Asia, Mahan realized not only the strategic importance of the region, but also of its center, the Persian Gulf. Mahan first used the term in his article The Persian Gulf and International Relations, published in September 1902 in the National Review, a British journal. The Middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar, it does not follow that either will be in the Persian Gulf. The British Navy should have the facility to concentrate in force if occasion arise, about Aden, India, mahans article was reprinted in The Times and followed in October by a 20-article series entitled The Middle Eastern Question, written by Sir Ignatius Valentine Chirol. During this series, Sir Ignatius expanded the definition of Middle East to include regions of Asia which extend to the borders of India or command the approaches to India. After the series ended in 1903, The Times removed quotation marks from subsequent uses of the term, in the late 1930s, the British established the Middle East Command, which was based in Cairo, for its military forces in the region. After that time, the term Middle East gained broader usage in Europe, the description Middle has also led to some confusion over changing definitions. Before the First World War, Near East was used in English to refer to the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire, while Middle East referred to Iran, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Turkestan. The first official use of the term Middle East by the United States government was in the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine, the Associated Press Stylebook says that Near East formerly referred to the farther west countries while Middle East referred to the eastern ones, but that now they are synonymous
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Sahara
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The Sahara is the largest hot desert and the third largest desert in the world after Antarctica and the Arctic. Its area of 9,200,000 square kilometres is comparable to the area of the United States. The desert comprises much of North Africa, excluding the fertile region on the Mediterranean Sea coast, the Atlas Mountains of the Maghreb, and the Nile Valley in Egypt and Sudan. It stretches from the Red Sea in the east and the Mediterranean in the north to the Atlantic Ocean in the west, where the landscape gradually changes from desert to coastal plains. To the south, it is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of tropical savanna around the Niger River valley. The Sahara can be divided into several regions including, the western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains, the Ténéré desert, the name Sahara is derived from ṣaḥārā, the plural of the Arabic word for desert. The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and it covers 9 million square kilometres, amounting to 31% of Africa. If all areas with an annual precipitation of less than 250 mm were included. It is one of three physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The Sahara is mainly rocky hamada, Ergs form only a minor part, wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features, sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas, stone plateaus, gravel plains, dry valleys, dry lakes, and salt flats. Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania, several deeply dissected mountains, many volcanic, rise from the desert, including the Aïr Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red Sea hills. The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi, a volcano in the Tibesti range of northern Chad. The central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation, the northern and southern reaches of the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. In the central, hyperarid region, there are subdivisions of the great desert, Tanezrouft, the Ténéré, the Libyan Desert, the Eastern Desert. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years, the northern limit also corresponds to the 100 mm isohyet of annual precipitation. To the south, the Sahara is bounded by the Sahel, the southern limit of the Sahara is indicated botanically by the southern limit of Cornulaca monacantha, or northern limit of Cenchrus biflorus, a grass typical of the Sahel. According to climatic criteria, the limit of the Sahara corresponds to the 150 mm isohyet of annual precipitation. The Sahara is the worlds largest low-latitude hot desert and this steady descending airflow causes a warming and a drying effect in the upper troposphere
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Africa
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Africa is the worlds second-largest and second-most-populous continent. At about 30.3 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earths total surface area and 20.4 % of its land area. With 1.2 billion people as of 2016, it accounts for about 16% of the human population. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos and it contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states, nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Africas population is the youngest amongst all the continents, the age in 2012 was 19.7. Algeria is Africas largest country by area, and Nigeria by population, afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster – with the earliest Homo sapiens found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago. Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas, it is the continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. Africa hosts a diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century European countries colonized most of Africa, Africa also varies greatly with regard to environments, economics, historical ties and government systems. However, most present states in Africa originate from a process of decolonization in the 20th century, afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of Africa, which in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean. This name seems to have referred to a native Libyan tribe. The name is connected with Hebrew or Phoenician ʿafar dust. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province of Africa Proconsularis, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a land, the later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modern-day Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name. According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while Asia was used to refer to Anatolia, as Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge. 25,4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya, isidore of Seville in Etymologiae XIV.5.2. Suggests Africa comes from the Latin aprica, meaning sunny, massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning to turn toward the opening of the Ka. The Ka is the double of every person and the opening of the Ka refers to a womb or birthplace
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West Africa
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West Africa, also called Western Africa and the West of Africa, is the westernmost subregion of Africa. Early human settlers from northern Holocene societies arrived in West Africa around 12,000 B. C, sedentary farming began in, or around the fifth millennium B. C, as well as the domestication of cattle. By 1500 B. C, ironworking technology allowed an expansion of productivity. Northern tribes developed walled settlements and non-walled settlements that numbered at 400, in the forest region, Iron Age cultures began to flourish, and an inter-region trade began to appear. The desertification of the Sahara and the change of the coast cause trade with upper Mediterranean peoples to be seen. Local leather, cloth, and gold also contributed to the abundance of prosperity for many of the following empires. Also, based on the archaeology of city of Kumbi Saleh in modern-day Mauritania, three great kingdoms were identified in Bilad al-Sudan by the ninth century. They included Ghana, Gao and Kanem, the Sosso Empire sought to fill the void, but was defeated by the Mandinka forces of Sundiata Keita, founder of the new Mali Empire. In the 15th century, the Songhai would form a new dominant state based on Gao, in the Songhai Empire, under the leadership of Sonni Ali, further east, Oyo arose as the dominant Yoruba state and the Aro Confederacy as a dominant Igbo state in modern-day Nigeria. The Kingdom of Nri was a West African medieval state in the present-day southeastern Nigeria, the Kingdom of Nri was unusual in the history of world government in that its leader exercised no military power over his subjects. The kingdom existed as a sphere of religious and political influence over a third of Igboland, the Eze Nri managed trade and diplomacy on behalf of the Nri people, and possessed divine authority in religious matters. The Oyo Empire was a Yoruba empire of what is today Western, established in the 15th century, the Oyo Empire grew to become one of the largest West African states. It rose through the organizational skills of the Yoruba, wealth gained from trade. The Benin Empire was an empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. Its capital was Edo, now known as Benin City, Edo and it should not be confused with the modern-day country called Benin, formerly called Dahomey. The Benin Empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in the hinterland of West Africa. Olfert Dapper, a Dutch writer, describing Benin in his book Description of Africa and its craft was the most adored and treasured bronze casting in the history of Africa. It was annexed by the British Empire in 1897 during the invasion, in the early 19th century, a series of Fulani reformist jihads swept across Western Africa
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Indian Ocean
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The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the worlds oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2. It is bounded by Asia on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, the Indian Ocean is known as Ratnākara, the mine of gems in ancient Sanskrit literature, and as Hind Mahāsāgar, in Hindi. The northernmost extent of the Indian Ocean is approximately 30° north in the Persian Gulf, the oceans continental shelves are narrow, averaging 200 kilometres in width. An exception is found off Australias western coast, where the width exceeds 1,000 kilometres. The average depth of the ocean is 3,890 m and its deepest point is Diamantina Deep in Diamantina Trench, at 8,047 m deep, Sunda Trench has a depth of 7, 258–7,725 m. North of 50° south latitude, 86% of the basin is covered by pelagic sediments. The remaining 14% is layered with terrigenous sediments, glacial outwash dominates the extreme southern latitudes. The major choke points include Bab el Mandeb, Strait of Hormuz, the Lombok Strait, the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean is artificially connected to the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal, which is accessible via the Red Sea. All of the Indian Ocean is in the Eastern Hemisphere and the centre of the Eastern Hemisphere is in this ocean, marginal seas, gulfs, bays and straits of the Indian Ocean include, The climate north of the equator is affected by a monsoon climate. Strong north-east winds blow from October until April, from May until October south, in the Arabian Sea the violent Monsoon brings rain to the Indian subcontinent. In the southern hemisphere, the winds are milder. When the monsoon winds change, cyclones sometimes strike the shores of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean is the warmest ocean in the world. Long-term ocean temperature records show a rapid, continuous warming in the Indian Ocean, Indian Ocean warming is the largest among the tropical oceans, and about 3 times faster than the warming observed in the Pacific. Research indicates that human induced greenhouse warming, and changes in the frequency, among the few large rivers flowing into the Indian Ocean are the Zambezi, Shatt al-Arab, Indus, Godavari, Krishna, Narmada, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Jubba and Irrawaddy River. The oceans currents are controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise, during the winter monsoon, however, currents in the north are reversed. Deep water circulation is controlled primarily by inflows from the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, north of 20° south latitude the minimum surface temperature is 22 °C, exceeding 28 °C to the east. Southward of 40° south latitude, temperatures drop quickly, surface water salinity ranges from 32 to 37 parts per 1000, the highest occurring in the Arabian Sea and in a belt between southern Africa and south-western Australia
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Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia
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