Nara or Na-ra may refer to:
Welwitschia is a monotypic genus of gymnosperm, the sole described species being the distinctive Welwitschia mirabilis, endemic to the Namib desert within Namibia and Angola. Welwitschia is the only living genus of the family Welwitschiaceae and order Welwitschiales in the division Gnetophyta, and is one of three living genera in Gnetophyta, alongside Gnetum and Ephedra. Informal sources commonly refer to the plant as a "living fossil".
Sassafras is a genus of three extant and one extinct species of deciduous trees in the family Lauraceae, native to eastern North America and eastern Asia. The genus is distinguished by its aromatic properties, which have made the tree useful to humans.
The Namib is a coastal desert in Southern Africa. According to the broadest definition, the Namib stretches for more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) along the Atlantic coasts of Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, extending southward from the Carunjamba River in Angola, through Namibia and to the Olifants River in Western Cape, South Africa. The Namib's northernmost portion, which extends 450 kilometres (280 mi) from the Angola-Namibia border, is known as Moçâmedes Desert, while its southern portion approaches the neighboring Kalahari Desert. From the Atlantic coast eastward, the Namib gradually ascends in elevation, reaching up to 200 kilometres (120 mi) inland to the foot of the Great Escarpment. Annual precipitation ranges from 2 millimetres (0.079 in) in the aridest regions to 200 millimetres (7.9 in) at the escarpment, making the Namib the only true desert in southern Africa. Having endured arid or semi-arid conditions for roughly 55–80 million years, the Namib may be the oldest desert in the world and contains some of the world's driest regions, with only western South America's Atacama Desert to challenge it for age and aridity benchmarks.
Castilleja, commonly known as paintbrush, Indian paintbrush, or prairie-fire, is a genus of about 200 species of annual and perennial herbaceous plants native to the west of the Americas from Alaska south to the Andes, northern Asia, and one species as far west as the Kola Peninsula in northwestern Russia. These plants are classified in the broomrape family Orobanchaceae. They are hemiparasitic on the roots of grasses and forbs. The generic name honors Spanish botanist Domingo Castillejo.
Morning glory is the common name for over 1,000 species of flowering plants in the family Convolvulaceae, whose current taxonomy and systematics are in flux. Morning glory species belong to many genera, some of which are:
Detritivores are heterotrophs that obtain nutrients by consuming detritus. There are many kinds of invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants that carry out coprophagy. By doing so, all these detritivores contribute to decomposition and the nutrient cycles. Detritivores should be distinguished from other decomposers, such as many species of bacteria, fungi and protists, which are unable to ingest discrete lumps of matter. Instead, these other decomposers live by absorbing and metabolizing on a molecular scale. The terms detritivore and decomposer are often used interchangeably, but they describe different organisms. Detritivores are usually arthropods and help in the process of remineralization. Detritivores perform the first stage of remineralization, by fragmenting the dead plant matter, allowing decomposers to perform the second stage of remineralization.
The thorny devil, also known commonly as the mountain devil, thorny lizard, thorny dragon, and moloch, is a species of lizard in the family Agamidae. The species is endemic to Australia. It is the sole species in the genus Moloch. It grows up to 21 cm (8.3 in) in total length, with females generally larger than males.
Cucumis metuliferus, commonly called the African horned cucumber, horned melon, spiked melon, jelly melon, or kiwano, is an annual vine in the cucumber and melon family Cucurbitaceae. Its fruit has horn-like spines, hence the name "horned melon". The ripe fruit has orange skin and lime-green, jelly-like flesh. C. metuliferus is native to Southern Africa, in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Angola.
Dioecy is a characteristic of certain species that have distinct unisexual individuals, each producing either male or female gametes, either directly or indirectly. Dioecious reproduction is biparental reproduction. Dioecy has costs, since only the female part of the population directly produces offspring. It is one method for excluding self-fertilization and promoting allogamy (outcrossing), and thus tends to reduce the expression of recessive deleterious mutations present in a population. Plants have several other methods of preventing self-fertilization including, for example, dichogamy, herkogamy, and self-incompatibility.
Casuarina is a genus of flowering plants in the family Casuarinaceae, and is native to Australia, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, islands of the western Pacific Ocean, and eastern Africa. Plants in the genus Casuarina are monoecious or dioecious trees with green, pendulous, photosynthetic branchlets, the leaves reduced to small scales arranged in whorls around the branchlets, the male and female flowers arranged in separate spikes, the fruit a cone containing grey or yellowish-brown winged seeds.
The gemsbok or South African oryx is a large antelope in the genus Oryx. It is native to the extremely dry, arid regions of Southern Africa; notably, the Kalahari and Namib Desert. Some authorities formerly classified the East African oryx as a subspecies.
Acanthosicyos horridus is an unusual melon that is endemic to the Namib desert. In English it is known as Nara, butter-nuts, or butterpips; in one of the Khoisan languages it is locally called ǃnaras or ǃnara.
Acanthosicyos naudinianus, known as the Gemsbok cucumber, is a perennial African melon with edible fruits and seeds.
The Namib brush-tailed gerbil or Setzer's hairy-footed gerbil is a species of rodent endemic to Angola and Namibia. Its natural habitats are sandy and gravelly plains. It stays in its burrow by day, emerging at night to feed on arthropods, vegetable matter, and seeds.
The dune hairy-footed gerbil, or the Namib dune gerbil is a species of rodent found only in Namibia. Its natural habitat is temperate desert where it lives in loose sand among sand dunes, feeding opportunistically on arthropods, seeds and green vegetation.
Rhamnus cathartica, the European buckthorn, common buckthorn, purging buckthorn, or just buckthorn, is a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Rhamnaceae. It is native to Europe, northwest Africa and western Asia, from the central British Isles south to Morocco, and east to Kyrgyzstan. It was introduced to North America as an ornamental shrub in the early 19th century or perhaps before, and is now naturalized in the northern half of the continent, and is classified as an invasive plant in several US states and in Ontario, Canada.
Encephalartos horridus, the Eastern Cape blue cycad, is a small, low-growing cycad up to 0.9 m (3.0 ft) high and 0.9 m (3.0 ft) wide. It is a native of Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, and found in arid shrublands, most commonly on ridges and slopes with shallow soils. The species is particularly known for its distinctly blue-gray leaves, although the degree of coloration can vary significantly. The species name horridus is Latin for 'bristly', after the plant's stiff, spiny leaflets.
Pechuel-loeschea, is a monotypic genus of African plants in the elecampane tribe within the sunflower family, and named after the German plant collector and geographer Eduard Pechuël-Loesche (1840-1913).
