The Brassicales are an order of flowering plants, belonging to the eurosids II group of dicotyledons under the APG II system. One character common to many members of the order is the production of glucosinolate compounds. Most systems of classification have included this order, although sometimes under the name Capparales.
The Ericaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with c. 4250 known species spread across 124 genera, making it the 14th most species-rich family of flowering plants. The many well known and economically important members of the Ericaceae include the cranberry, blueberry, huckleberry, rhododendron, and various common heaths and heathers.
Cornus is a genus of about 30–60 species of woody plants in the family Cornaceae, commonly known as dogwoods, which can generally be distinguished by their blossoms, berries, and distinctive bark. Most are deciduous trees or shrubs, but a few species are nearly herbaceous perennial subshrubs, and some species are evergreen. Several species have small heads of inconspicuous flowers surrounded by an involucre of large, typically white petal-like bracts, while others have more open clusters of petal-bearing flowers. The various species of dogwood are native throughout much of temperate and boreal Eurasia and North America, with China, Japan, and the southeastern United States being particularly rich in native species.
The Annonaceae are a family of flowering plants consisting of trees, shrubs, or rarely lianas commonly known as the custard apple family or soursop family. With 108 accepted genera and about 2400 known species, it is the largest family in the Magnoliales. Several genera produce edible fruit, most notably Annona, Anonidium, Asimina, Rollinia, and Uvaria. Its type genus is Annona. The family is concentrated in the tropics, with few species found in temperate regions. About 900 species are Neotropical, 450 are Afrotropical, and the remaining are Indomalayan.
Thomas Horsfield was an American physician and naturalist who worked extensively in Indonesia, describing numerous species of plants and animals from the region. He was later a curator of the East India Company Museum in London.
Woollybush, woolly bush or woolly-bush is a common name for plants of the genus Adenanthos with leaves deeply divided into long, soft, slender laciniae, often covered in a fine down of soft hairs. These properties give the leaves a soft, silky feel, in stark contrast to the sclerophyllous plants that dominate both its geographic range and its taxonomic family (Proteaceae). This softness accounts for the common name.
Adenanthos is a genus of Australian native shrubs in the flowering plant family Proteaceae. Variable in habit and leaf shape, it is the only genus in the family where solitary flowers are the norm. It was discovered in 1791, and formally published by Jacques Labillardière in 1805. The type species is Adenanthos cuneatus, and 33 species are recognised. The genus is placed in subfamily Proteoideae, and is held to be most closely related to several South African genera.
Robert Wight MD FRS FLS was a Scottish surgeon in the East India Company, whose professional career was spent entirely in southern India, where his greatest achievements were in botany – as an economic botanist and leading taxonomist in south India. He contributed to the introduction of American cotton. As a taxonomist he described 110 new genera and 1267 new species of flowering plants. He employed Indian botanical artists to illustrate many plants collected by himself and Indian collectors he trained. Some of these illustrations were published by William Hooker in Britain, but from 1838 he published a series of illustrated works in Madras including the uncoloured, six-volume Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (1838–53) and two hand-coloured, two-volume works, the Illustrations of Indian Botany (1838–50) and Spicilegium Neilgherrense (1845–51). By the time he retired from India in 1853 he had published 2464 illustrations of Indian plants. The standard author abbreviation Wight is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Annona sericea is a species of plant in the family Annonaceae. It is native to Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad-Tobago and Venezuela. Michel Félix Dunal, the French botanist who first formally described the species, named it after the silky hairs on its branches and leaves. In Brazil its common name is Aratincum do Para.
Leucosidea sericea, commonly known as oldwood, is an evergreen tree or large shrub that grows in the highland regions of southern Africa. It is the sole species in the monotypic genus Leucosidea. The name oldwood may reflect the fact that the wood burns slowly, as if old and rotting; the gnarled, twisted trunks reinforce this impression.
Adenanthos sericeus, commonly known as woolly bush, is a shrub native to the south coast of Western Australia. It has bright red but small and obscure flowers, and very soft, deeply divided, hairy leaves.
Grevillea sericea, commonly known as the pink spider flower, is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to New South Wales. It is a shrub with elliptic to lance-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and clusters of usually pink flowers arranged on one side of a flowering rachis.
Hakea sericea, commonly known as bushy needlewood or silky hakea, is a large shrub with a profusion of mainly white flowers from July for several months. It is endemic to eastern Australia. It has become an environmental weed in some countries.
Phacelia sericea, the silky phacelia or blue alpine phacelia, is a showy perennial species of Phacelia endemic to western North America. It grows mainly at subalpine to alpine elevations in forest openings or above treeline among rocks and sand. Sericea comes from the Latin sericeus, or silky, referring to the fine hairs on the leaves and stem.
Blumea is a genus of flowering plants of the family Asteraceae.
Adenanthos macropodianus, commonly known as gland flower, or Kangaroo Island gland flower, is a species of shrub in the family Proteaceae. It is endemic to Kangaroo Island in South Australia. First published as a variety of A. sericeus in 1870, it was promoted to species rank in 1978.
Khasiaclunea is a genus of plants in the family Rubiaceae. It has only one known species, Khasiaclunea oligocephala, known from the high mountains of the Darjeeling region of India through Assam and Bhutan to Burma (Myanmar).
Darwinia speciosa is a plant in the myrtle family Myrtaceae and is endemic to the southwest of Western Australia. It is a dwarf, spreading or prostrate shrub with narrowly oblong leaves arranged in opposite pairs, and greenish flowers surrounded by larger dark red or brownish involucral bracts.
Bossiaea sericea is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to higher areas of south-eastern continental Australia. It is an erect shrub with more or less round to heart-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and yellow flowers.
John Shortt was an Anglo-Indian physician who served in the Madras Presidency in southern India. He conducted research on snake venoms, wrote on a variety of other subjects including anthropology, agriculture, and animal husbandry. A species of shieldtail snake endemic to the Shevaroy Hills is named after him, Uropeltis shorttii.
