1.
Crassula ovata
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Crassula ovata, commonly known as jade plant, friendship tree, lucky plant, or money tree, is a succulent plant with small pink or white flowers. It is native to South Africa and Mozambique, and is common as a houseplant worldwide, much of its popularity stems from the low levels of care needed, the jade plant requires little water and can survive in most indoor conditions. It is sometimes referred to as the tree, however. The jade plant is an evergreen with thick branches and it has thick, shiny, smooth, leaves that grow in opposing pairs along the branches. Leaves are a rich green, although some may appear to be more of a yellow-green. Some varieties may develop a red tinge on the edges of leaves when exposed to levels of sunlight. New stem growth is the color and texture as the leaves. Although becoming brown and appearing woody with age, stems never become true lignified tissue, remaining succulent, under the right conditions, they may produce small white or pink star-like flowers in early spring. Numerous varieties and cultivars have been selected, of which C. ovata Hummels Sunset has gained the Royal Horticultural Societys Award of Garden Merit, Crassula ovata is native to Mozambique and to the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces of South Africa. As a succulent, Crassula ovata requires little water in the summer, C. ovata may garnish a red tinge around its leaves when grown with bright sunlight. In more extreme cases, the colour of the plant is lost. This is caused by the plant making pigments such as carotenoids to protect from harsh sunlight. The jade plant also does best in rich, well-draining soil, the plant also flowers in the wintertime, particularly during a cooler, darker, dry spell. C. ovata is sometimes attacked by mealybugs, a nuisance of the succulents. The jade plant is known for its ease of propagation. Jade plants propagate readily from both with success rates higher with cuttings, in the wild, propagation is the jade plants main method of reproduction. Branches regularly fall off wild jade plants and these branches may root, like many succulents, jade plants can be propagated from just the swollen leaves which grow in pairs on the stems. While propagation methods may vary, most will follow similar steps, typically, the wounds on the leaves are left to dry and callous over
2.
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
3.
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
4.
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
5.
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
6.
Saxifragales
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The Saxifragales are an order of flowering plants. Their closest relatives are a large group known as the rosids by the definition of rosids given in the APG II classification system. Some authors define the more widely, including Saxifragales as their most basal group. Saxifragales is one of the eight groups that compose the core eudicots, the others are Gunnerales, Dilleniaceae, Rosids, Santalales, Berberidopsidales, Caryophyllales, and asterids. Saxifragales have a fossil record. The extant members are apparently remnants of a diverse and widespread order. The Saxifragales order, as it is now understood, is based upon the results of phylogenetic studies of DNA sequences. It is not part of any of the classification based on plant morphology. The order is divided into groups as shown on the phylogenetic tree below. These groups are informal and are not understood to have any taxonomic rank. These are distributed into 15 families, or into 12 families if Haloragaceae sensu lato is recognized as a family consisting of Haloragaceae sensu stricto, Penthorum, Tetracarpaea, about 95% of the species are in five families, Crassulaceae, Saxifragaceae, Grossulariaceae, Haloragaceae, and Hamamelidaceae. Most of the families are monogeneric, the number of genera in each family is, Some authors do not recognize Choristylis as a separate genus from Itea. Similarly, some authors sink Liquidambar and Semiliquidambar into Altingia, thus Altingiaceae and Iteaceae are monogeneric in some classifications. Within the Saxifragales is a group known as the Saxifragaceae alliance. It comprises four families, Pterostemonaceae, Iteaceae, Grossulariaceae, and these have long been known to be related to each other, but the circumscription of Saxifragaceae has changed dramatically. It is now a smaller family than it had been. Crassulaceae and Tetracarpaeaceae have long associated with Saxifragaceae. Penthorum has usually been associated with Crassulaceae, but sometimes with Saxifragaceae, two members of the core Saxifragales had sometimes been placed near Saxifragaceae, but usually elsewhere
7.
Jean Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire
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Jean Henri Jaume Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist and artist, born in Grasse, France. Born as Jaume, he added Saint-Hilaire later, some biographers indicate that this addition was to distinguish himself from a family member, Henri-Honore Jaume, a Jacobin who had been involved in the Reign of Terror, during the French Revolution. He served in the French Army during the Italian campaign, before returning to life in 1800. He then returned to Paris and resumed his studies, especially natural history and he wrote a guide to the new Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle, and learned floral painting from Gérard van Spaendonck. In it, he popularized the classification of Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu, Jaume was quite interested in forests, and became a member of Société Royale d’Agriculture in 1831. He also became interested in the culture of Wrightia tinctoria, a member of the plant family Apocynaceae used for its dyeing qualities, la flore et la pomone françaises, histoire et figure en couleur, des fleurs et des fruits de France ou naturalisés sur le sol français. Traité des arbres forestiers, ou histoire et description des arbres indigènes ou naturalisés, a work preceded by une instruction sur la culture des arbres, by M. Thouin. Traité des arbrisseaux et des arbustes cultivés en France et en pleine terre, roger L. Williams, Gerard and Jaume, Two Neglected Figures in the History of Jussiaean Classification
8.
Echeveria
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Echeveria is a large genus of flowering plants in the Crassulaceae family, native to semi-desert areas of Central America, Mexico and northwestern South America. Plants may be evergreen or deciduous, flowers on short stalks arise from compact rosettes of succulent fleshy, often brightly coloured leaves. Species are polycarpic, meaning that they may flower and set seed many times over the course of their lifetimes. Often numerous offsets are produced, and are known as hen and chicks, which can also refer to other genera, such as Sempervivum. The genus is named after the 18th century Mexican botanical artist Atanasio Echeverría y Godoy, many Echeveria species are popular as ornamental garden plants. They are drought-resistant, although they do better with regular watering and fertilizing. Most will tolerate shade and some frost, although tend to be less tolerant. Most lose their leaves in winter, as a result, after a few years. In addition, if not removed, the leaves may decay. They can be propagated easily by separating offsets, but also by leaf cuttings, Echeveria has been extensively bred and hybridised. The following is a selection of available plants, perle von Nürnberg has gained the Royal Horticultural Societys Award of Garden Merit
9.
Hen and chicks
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Hen and chicks is a common name for a group of small succulent plants belonging to the flowering plant family Crassulaceae, native to southern Europe and northern Africa. They grow close to the ground with leaves formed around each other in a rosette, and propagating by offsets. The hen is the plant, and the chicks are the offspring. The name is used for some species of Echeveria, Sedum and Bergenia although these plants differ significantly from Sempervivum and Jovibarba. Hen and chicks is popular in gardens for its varied and interesting appearance and it is grown as container planting or in rock gardens. It does best in well-drained, rocky soil, if they are kept wet, although it does best in sun, it will grow in light shade
Data related to Crassulaceae at Wikispecies