Mimosoideae
The Mimosoideae are trees, herbs and shrubs that grow in tropical and subtropical climates. They comprise a clade placed at the subfamily or family level in the flowering plant family Fabaceae. In previous classifications, Mimosoideae refers to what was considered the tribe Mimoseae. Characteristics include flowers in radial symmetry with petals that are valvate in bud, have numerous showy, prominent stamens. Mimosoideae comprise 2,500 species; some classification systems, for example the Cronquist system, treat the Fabaceae in a narrow sense, raising the Mimisoideae to the rank of family as Mimosaceae. The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group treats Fabaceae in the broad sense; the Mimosoideae were subdivided into four tribes. However, modern molecular phylogenetics has shown. Several informal subgroups have been proposed, but not yet described formally as tribes. Additionally, the genus Acacia was segregated into five genera; the following fossil wood morphogenera have been described: Modern molecular phylogenetics suggests the following relationships: Acacieae is a wide-ranging, polyphyletic tribe of legumes in the Mimosoideae, native to the tropics and warm-temperate regions.
It includes six genera and some 1,450 species. Subdivision – 5 or 6 genera Acacia Mill. -- type genus Vachellia Arn. Senegalia Rafinesque Acaciella Britton & Rose Mariosousa Seigler & Ebinger Racosperma Martius In Bentham's 1842 circumscription of the subfamily Mimosoideae, Acacieae was one of its three constituent tribes, the others being Ingeae Benth. & Hook.f. and Mimoseae Bornn. His Acacieae tribe of 1842 included many genera that were subsequently assigned to tribe Ingeae Benth. In 1875, Bentham narrowed his definition of Acacieae so as to include only Acacia Mill; the only morphological character of Acacieae used to distinguish it from the Ingeae is the presence of free stamens. In the Ingeae they are fused in the form of a tube, whereas in the Acacieae only a few species have the stamens fused at the base. Several characters of the foliage, seed pods and stipules are shared by the two tribes; the flower morphology of Acacia s.l. has characteristics in common with the genera Leucaena and Mimosa and Enterolobium and Lysiloma.
The tribal position of monotypic genus Faidherbia A. Chevalier is equivocal, it was included in the Acacieae by Vassal and Maslin et al. but Lewis & Rico Arce placed it in tribe Ingeae following Polhill and Luckow et al.. In the latter case, tribe Acacieae may conform to genus Acacia s.l. pending the latter's relationship to other mimosoid genera. Faidherbia is troublesome as its stamens are shortly united at their base and its pollen is similar to some taxa in the Ingeae, they are shrubs or lianas, which may be armed or unarmed. Where they have spines, these are modified stipules. In some, prickles epidermis; the leaves are modified to vertically oriented phyllodes. A few have cladodes rather than leaves. Extrafloral nectaries may be present on the petiole and rachis, the pinnule tips may carry protein-lipid Beltian bodies; the leaflets are opposite, are carried on shortly stalks or are sessile. The heartwood is red and hard, the sap of various species hardens into gum; the inflorescences are dense pedunculate heads or spikes borne in axillary clusters, or are aggregated in terminal panicles.
The tetra - or pentamerous flowers are male and bisexual. Sepals are valvate; the reduced petals are valvate, or absent. The flowers have numerous exserted stamens, their filaments are sometimes connate at their base. Male flowers of some neotropical species have a reduced staminal tube. Flowers are yellow or cream-coloured, but may be white, red, or purple; the ovary is stipitate, with many ovules or ovules arranged in two rows. The ovary is attached by a filiform style to a capitate stigma; the legume's endocarp is attached to the exocarp, but is otherwise variable, may be dehiscent or indehiscent. Seeds are elliptic to oblong and flattened to varying degrees. Seeds have a hard black-brown testa with a pleurogram, visible as a closed or closed O-shaped line; some phyllodinous species have a colourful elaiosome on the seed. Data related to Acacieae at Wikispecies Media related to Mimosoideae at Wikimedia Commons
London
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south-east of England, at the head of its 50-mile estuary leading to the North Sea, London has been a major settlement for two millennia. Londinium was founded by the Romans; the City of London, London's ancient core − an area of just 1.12 square miles and colloquially known as the Square Mile − retains boundaries that follow its medieval limits. The City of Westminster is an Inner London borough holding city status. Greater London is governed by the Mayor of the London Assembly. London is considered to be one of the world's most important global cities and has been termed the world's most powerful, most desirable, most influential, most visited, most expensive, sustainable, most investment friendly, most popular for work, the most vegetarian friendly city in the world. London exerts a considerable impact upon the arts, education, fashion, healthcare, professional services and development, tourism and transportation.
London ranks 26 out of 300 major cities for economic performance. It is one of the largest financial centres and has either the fifth or sixth largest metropolitan area GDP, it is the most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the busiest city airport system as measured by passenger traffic. It is the leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. London's universities form the largest concentration of higher education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted three modern Summer Olympic Games. London has a diverse range of people and cultures, more than 300 languages are spoken in the region, its estimated mid-2016 municipal population was 8,787,892, the most populous of any city in the European Union and accounting for 13.4% of the UK population. London's urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census.
The population within the London commuter belt is the most populous in the EU with 14,040,163 inhabitants in 2016. London was the world's most populous city from c. 1831 to 1925. London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London. Other landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square and The Shard. London has numerous museums, galleries and sporting events; these include the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, Tate Modern, British Library and West End theatres. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world. "London" is an ancient name, attested in the first century AD in the Latinised form Londinium. Over the years, the name has attracted many mythicising explanations; the earliest attested appears in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, written around 1136. This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.
Modern scientific analyses of the name must account for the origins of the different forms found in early sources Latin, Old English, Welsh, with reference to the known developments over time of sounds in those different languages. It is agreed; this was adapted into Latin as Londinium and borrowed into Old English, the ancestor-language of English. The toponymy of the Common Brythonic form is much debated. A prominent explanation was Richard Coates's 1998 argument that the name derived from pre-Celtic Old European *lowonida, meaning "river too wide to ford". Coates suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London. However, most work has accepted a Celtic origin for the name, recent studies have favoured an explanation along the lines of a Celtic derivative of a proto-Indo-European root *lendh-, combined with the Celtic suffix *-injo- or *-onjo-. Peter Schrijver has suggested, on these grounds, that the name meant'place that floods'; until 1889, the name "London" applied to the City of London, but since it has referred to the County of London and Greater London.
"London" is sometimes written informally as "LDN". In 1993, the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the south foreshore, upstream of Vauxhall Bridge; this bridge either reached a now lost island in it. Two of those timbers were radiocarbon dated to between 1750 BC and 1285 BC. In 2010 the foundations of a large timber structure, dated to between 4800 BC and 4500 BC, were found on the Thames's south foreshore, downstream of Vauxhall Bridge; the function of the mesolithic structure is not known. Both structures are on the south bank. Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans about four years after the invasion
Albizia
Albizia is a genus of more than 160 species of fast-growing subtropical and tropical trees and shrubs in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae. The genus is pantropical, occurring in Asia, Madagascar and Australia, but in the Old World tropics. In some locations, some species are considered weeds, they are called silk plants, silk trees, or sirises. The obsolete spelling of the generic name - with double'z' - is still common, so the plants may be called albizzias; the generic name honors the Italian nobleman Filippo degli Albizzi, who introduced Albizia julibrissin to Europe in the mid-18th century. Some species are called mimosa, which more refers to plants of genus Mimosa. Species from southeast Asia used for timber are sometime termed East Indian walnut, they are small trees or shrubs with a short lifespan, though the famous Samán del Guère near Maracay in Venezuela is a huge Albizia saman specimen several hundred years old. The leaves are bipinnately compound; the small flowers are in bundles, with stamens much longer than the petals.
The stamens are showy, although in some species such as A. canescens the flowers are inconspicuous. Unlike those of Mimosa, Albizia flowers have many more than 10 stamens. Albizia can be told apart from another large related genus, Acacia, by its stamens, which are joined at the bases instead of separate. Albizias are important forage and medicinal plants, many are cultivated as ornamentals for their attractive flowers; some species are used as food plants by the larvae of moths in the genus Endoclita, including E. damor, E. malabaricus, E. sericeus. Numerous species placed in Albizia by early authors were moved to other genera, most notably Archidendron. Other genera of Ingeae have received their share of former Albizia species, as have the Mimoseae Newtonia and Schleinitzia; some presumed "silk trees" are in fact misidentified members of the not closely related genus Erythrophleum from the Caesalpinioideae and Lebeckia from the Faboideae. The delimitation of Falcataria and Pithecellobium, close relatives of Albizia, is notoriously complex, with species having been moved between the genera time and again, this will continue.
These include a common shade tree on tea plantations. Other related genera like Chloroleucon and Samanea are merged with Albizia entirely. Molucca albizia is considered an invasive species on many other Pacific Islands; the tree grows rapidly and can colonize disturbed areas in wet environments. It tends to shed large branches, damaging power lines and other infrastructure in Hawaii. List of Albizia species Dressler, S.. "Albizia". African plants – a Photo Guide. Frankfurt/Main: Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg
Kerala
Kerala, locally known as Keralam, is a state on the southwestern, Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions. Spread over 38,863 km2, Kerala is the twenty-second largest Indian state by area, it is bordered by Karnataka to the north and northeast, Tamil Nadu to the east and south, the Lakshadweep Sea and Arabian Sea to the west. With 33,387,677 inhabitants as per the 2011 Census, Kerala is the thirteenth-largest Indian state by population, it is divided into 14 districts with the capital being Thiruvananthapuram. Malayalam is the most spoken language and is the official language of the state; the Chera Dynasty was the first prominent kingdom based in Kerala. The Ay kingdom in the deep south and the Ezhimala kingdom in the north formed the other kingdoms in the early years of the Common Era; the region had been a prominent spice exporter since 3000 BCE. The region's prominence in trade was noted in the works of Pliny as well as the Periplus around 100 CE.
In the 15th century, the spice trade attracted Portuguese traders to Kerala, paved the way for European colonisation of India. At the time of Indian independence movement in the early 20th century, there were two major princely states in Kerala-Travancore State and the Kingdom of Cochin, they united to form the state of Thiru-Kochi in 1949. The Malabar region, in the northern part of Kerala had been a part of the Madras province of British India, which became a part of the Madras State post-independence. After the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, the modern-day state of Kerala was formed by merging the Malabar district of Madras State, the state of Thiru-Kochi, the taluk of Kasaragod in South Canara, a part of Madras State; the economy of Kerala is the 12th-largest state economy in India with ₹7.73 lakh crore in gross domestic product and a per capita GDP of ₹163,000. Kerala has the lowest positive population growth rate in India, 3.44%. The state has witnessed significant emigration to Arab states of the Persian Gulf during the Gulf Boom of the 1970s and early 1980s, its economy depends on remittances from a large Malayali expatriate community.
Hinduism is practised by more than half of the population, followed by Christianity. The culture is a synthesis of Aryan, Dravidian and European cultures, developed over millennia, under influences from other parts of India and abroad; the production of pepper and natural rubber contributes to the total national output. In the agricultural sector, tea, coffee and spices are important; the state's coastline extends for 595 kilometres, around 1.1 million people in the state are dependent on the fishery industry which contributes 3% to the state's income. The state has the highest media exposure in India with newspapers publishing in nine languages English and Malayalam. Kerala is one of the prominent tourist destinations of India, with backwaters, hill stations, Ayurvedic tourism and tropical greenery as its major attractions; the name Kerala has an uncertain etymology. One popular theory derives Kerala from alam; the word Kerala is first recorded as Keralaputra in a 3rd-century BCE rock inscription left by the Maurya emperor Ashoka, one of his edicts pertaining to welfare.
The inscription refers to the local ruler as Keralaputra. This contradicts the theory that Kera is from "coconut tree". At that time, one of three states in the region was called Cheralam in Classical Tamil: Chera and Kera are variants of the same word; the word Cheral refers to the oldest known dynasty of Kerala kings and is derived from the Proto-Tamil-Malayalam word for "lake". The earliest Sanskrit text to mention Kerala is the Aitareya Aranyaka of the Rigveda. Kerala is mentioned in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the two Hindu epics; the Skanda Purana mentions the ecclesiastical office of the Thachudaya Kaimal, referred to as Manikkam Keralar, synonymous with the deity of the Koodalmanikyam temple. Keralam may stem from the Classical Tamil chera alam; the Greco-Roman trade map. According to Tamil classic Purananuru, Chera king Senkuttuvan conquered the lands between Kanyakumari and the Himalayas. Lacking worthy enemies, he besieged the sea by throwing his spear into it. According to the 17th century Malayalam work Keralolpathi, the lands of Kerala were recovered from the sea by the axe-wielding warrior sage Parasurama, the sixth avatar of Vishnu.
Parasurama threw his axe across the sea, the water receded as far as it reached. According to legend, this new area of land extended from Gokarna to Kanyakumari; the land which rose from sea was filled with unsuitable for habitation. Out of respect and all snakes were appo
Pinnation
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 some forms of ice or metal crystals, in patterns of erosion or stream beds; the term derives from the Latin word pinna meaning "feather", "wing", or "fin". A similar concept is pectination, a comb-like arrangement of parts. Pinnation is 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, although they are sometimes used distinctly, there is no consistent difference in the meaning or usage of the two words. Botanically, pinnation is an arrangement of discrete 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 divided fronds, in ferns the leaflets or segments are referred to as "pinnae".
Plants with pinnate leaves are sometimes colloquially called "feather-leaved". Most of the following definitions are from Jackson's Glossary of Botanical Terms: pinnatifid and pinnatipartite: leaves with pinnate lobes that are not discrete, remaining sufficiently connected to each other that they are not separate leaflets. Pinnatisect: cut all the way to the midrib or other axis, but with the bases of the pinnae not contracted to form discrete leaflets. Pinnate-pinnatifid: pinnate, with the pinnae being pinnatifid. Paripinnate: pinnately compound leaves in which leaflets are borne in pairs along the rachis without a single terminal leaflet. Imparipinnate: pinnately compound leaves in which there is a lone 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. 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; some apply it to the leaflets of a pinna the leaflets of bipinnate or tripinnate leaves. Others or alternatively apply it to second or third order divisions of a bipinnate or tripinnate leaf, it is the ultimate free division of a compound leaf, or a pinnate subdivision of a multipinnate leaf. In animals, pinnation occurs in various organisms and structures, including: Some muscles can be unipinnate or bipinnate muscles The fish Platax pinnatus is known as the pinnate spadefish or pinnate batfish. Pinnation occurs in certain waterway systems in which all major tributary streams enter the main channels by flowing in one direction at an oblique angle
Mimosa pudica
Mimosa pudica is a creeping annual or perennial flowering plant of the pea/legume family Fabaceae and Magnoliopsida taxon grown for its curiosity value: the compound leaves fold inward and droop when touched or shaken, defending themselves from harm, re-open a few minutes later. In the UK it has gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit; the species is native to South America and Central America, but is now a pantropical weed, can be found in Southern United States, South Asia and East Asia as well. It is not shade tolerant, is found on soils with low nutrient concentrations Mimosa pudica is well known for its rapid plant movement. Like a number of other plant species, it undergoes changes in leaf orientation termed "sleep" or nyctinastic movement; the foliage reopens in light. This was first studied by the French scientist Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan. Due to Mimosa's unique response to touch, it became an ideal plant for many experiments regarding plant habituation and memory.
Mimosa pudica was first formally described by Carl Linnaeus in Species Plantarum in 1753. The species epithet, pudica, is Latin for "bashful" or "shrinking", alluding to its shrinking reaction to contact; the species is known by numerous common names including sensitive plant, humble plant and touch-me-not. The stem becomes creeping or trailing with age, it can hang low and become floppy. The stem is slender and sparsely to densely prickly, growing to a length of 1.5 m. The leaves are bipinnately compound, with one or two pinnae pairs, 10–26 leaflets per pinna; the petioles are prickly. Pedunculate pale pink or purple flower heads arise from the leaf axils in mid summer with more and more flowers as the plant gets older; the globose to ovoid heads are 8–10 mm in diameter. On close examination, it is seen that the floret petals are red in their upper part and the filaments are pink to lavender; the fruit consists of clusters of 2–8 pods from 1–2 cm long each, these being prickly on the margins. The pods contain pale brown seeds some 2.5 mm long.
The flowers are wind pollinated. The seeds have hard seed coats which restrict germination and make osmotic pressure and soil acidity less significant hindrances. High temperatures are the main stimuli; the roots of Mimosa pudica create carbon disulfide, which prevents certain pathogenic and mycorrhizal fungi from growing within the plant’s rhizosphere. This allows the formation of nodules on the roots of the plant that contain endosymbiotic diazotrophs, which fix atmospheric nitrogen and convert it into a form, usable by the plant. Mimosa pudica is a tetraploid; the leaflets close when stimulated in other ways, such as touching, blowing, which are all encapsulated within mechanical or electrical stimulation. These types of movements have been termed seismonastic movements; this reflex may have evolved as a defense mechanism to disincentivize predators, or alternatively to shade the plant in order to reduce water lossage due to evaporation. The main structure mechanistically responsible for the drooping of the leaves is the pulvinus.
The stimulus is transmitted as an action potential from a stimulated leaflet, to the leaflet's swollen base, from there to the pulvini of the other leaflets, which run along the length of the leaf's rachis. The action potential passes into the petiole, to the large pulvinus at the end of the petiole, where the leaf attaches to the stem; the pulvini cells gain and lose turgor due to water moving in and out of these cells, multiple ion concentrations play a role in the manipulation of water movement. Ions cannot move in and out of cells, so protein channels such as voltage-gated potassium channels and calcium-permeable anion channels are responsible for allowing potassium and calcium to flow through the cell membrane, making cells permeable to these ions; the action potential causes potassium ions to flow out from the vacuoles of cells in the various pulvini. Differences in turgidity in different regions of the leaf and stem results in the closing of the leaflets and the collapse of the leaf petiole.
Other important proteins include H+-ATPases and actin, which all aid in the redistribution of ions in the pulvini during a seismonastic response. H+-ATPases and aquaporins aid in the direct movement of water molecules, while actin’s role has a more biochemical explanation. Actin is composed of many phosphorylated tyrosine molecules, manipulation of how phosphorylated the tyrosine molecules are directly correlates to how much the M. pudica leaves droop. This movement of folding inwards is energetically costly for the plant and interferes with the process of photosynthesis; this characteristic is quite common within the Mimosoideae subfamily of Fabaceae. The stimulus can be transmitted to neighboring leaves, it is not known why Mimosa pudica evolved this trait, but many scientists think that the plant uses its ability to shrink as a defense from herbivores. Animals would rather eat a less active one. Another possible explanation is. In a study completed by Dr. Robert Allen, the movement of calcium and chloride ions in pulvini cells was analyzed to better understand how ion and water flux affect M. pudica leaves drooping.
A batch of M
