Anacardium, the cashews, are a genus of flowering plants in the family Anacardiaceae, native to tropical regions of the Americas. The best known species is Anacardium occidentale, which is commercially cultivated for its cashew nuts and cashew apples.
Paleobotany, also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (paleogeography), and the evolutionary history of plants, with a bearing upon the evolution of life in general. A synonym is paleophytology. It is a component of paleontology and paleobiology. The prefix palaeo- or paleo- means "ancient, old", and is derived from the Greek adjective παλαιός, palaios. Paleobotany includes the study of terrestrial plant fossils, as well as the study of prehistoric marine photoautotrophs, such as photosynthetic algae, seaweeds or kelp. A closely related field is palynology, which is the study of fossilized and extant spores and pollen.
Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart FRS FRSE FGS was a French botanist. He was the son of the geologist Alexandre Brongniart and grandson of the architect, Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart. Brongniart's pioneering work on the relationships between extinct and existing plants has earned him the title of father of paleobotany. His major work on plant fossils was his Histoire des végétaux fossiles (1828–37). He wrote his dissertation on the Buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae), an extant family of flowering plants, and worked at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris until his death. In 1851, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Brongn. when citing a botanical name.
The Rhamnaceae are a large family of flowering plants, mostly trees, shrubs, and some vines, commonly called the buckthorn family. Rhamnaceae is included in the order Rosales.
William Crawford Williamson was an English Naturalist and Palaeobotanist.
Gnetum is a genus of gymnosperms, the sole genus in the family Gnetaceae within the Gnetophyta. They are tropical evergreen trees, shrubs and lianas. Unlike other gymnosperms, they possess vessel elements in the xylem. Some species have been proposed to have been the first plants to be insect-pollinated as their fossils occur in association with extinct pollinating scorpionflies. Molecular phylogenies based on nuclear and plastid sequences from most of the species indicate hybridization among some of the Southeast Asian species. Fossil-calibrated molecular-clocks suggest that the Gnetum lineages now found in Africa, South America and Southeast Asia are the result of ancient long-distance dispersal across seawater.
Taxodium ascendens, also known as pond cypress, is a deciduous conifer of the genus Taxodium, native to North America. Many botanists treat it as a variety of bald cypress, Taxodium distichum rather than as a distinct species, but it differs in habitat, occurring mainly in still blackwater rivers, ponds and swamps without silt-rich flood deposits. It predominates in cypress dome habitats.
Knightia is a small genus of the family Proteaceae endemic to New Zealand, named in honor of Thomas Andrew Knight. One extant species, K. excelsa (rewarewa) is found in New Zealand. Two further Knightia species are found in New Caledonia, although they were placed in the genus Eucarpha by Lawrie Johnson and Barbara Briggs in their influential 1975 monograph "On the Proteaceae: the evolution and classification of a southern family", a placement supported in a 2006 classification of the Proteaceae. A fossil species from upper Miocene deposits in Kaikorai has been described as Knightia oblonga. Knightia has been placed in the tribe Roupaleae of the subfamily Grevilleoideae.
Alexandre Brongniart was a French chemist, mineralogist, geologist, paleontologist, and zoologist, who collaborated with Georges Cuvier on a study of the geology of the region around Paris. Observing fossil content as well as lithology in sequences, he classified Tertiary formations and was responsible for defining 19th century geological studies as a subject of science by assembling observations and classifications.
Dracophyllum is a genus of plants belonging to the family Ericaceae, formerly Epacridaceae. There are 61 species in the genus, mostly shrubs, but also cushion plants and trees, found in New Zealand, Australia, Lord Howe Island and New Caledonia. The name Dracophyllum, meaning dragon-leaf, refers to their strong outward similarity to the unrelated Dracaena, sometimes known as dragon tree. Although dicotyledonous, they resemble primitive monocots with their slender leaves concentrated in clumps at the ends of the branches; they are sometimes called grass-trees.
Pitcairnia subg. Pepinia is a subgenus of plants in the family Bromeliaceae. It has at times been treated as the separate genus Pepinia, but is now included again in the genus Pitcairnia. The name is for Pierre Denis Pépin, French member of the Imperial and Central Society of Agriculture (c.1802-1876).
Peucedanum is a genus of flowering plant in the carrot family, Apiaceae. Peucedanum boasts a global presence with diverse spread of morphological features. Peucedanum species are characterized by dorsally compressed mericarps, slightly prominent dorsal ribs, narrowly winged lateral ribs, and a broad commissure. However, the vast diversity of morphology, fruit forms, and phytochemical production makes classifying species in the Peucedanum challenging. Historically relevant in traditional medicine, Peucedanum's taxonomic complexity arises from its extensive diversity.
Hamatophyton is a genus of the extinct Sphenophyllales horsetails. Unique to this genus among other Sphenophyllales is its lack of secondary xylem around the tips of the primary xylem arms. One of its species has also been placed in the genus Sphenophyllostachys, which is regarded as a synonym of Bowmanites by the Interim Register of Marine and Nonmarine Genera.
Hamatophyton verticillatum is a species of the extinct Sphenophyllales horsetails.
Bernard Renault was a French paleobotanist. He was a specialist in regard to the anatomy of Carboniferous and Permian plants.
Cyathopsis albicans is a species of plant in the family Ericaceae, endemic to New Caledonia. It was first described as Leucopogon albicans in 1864 by Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart and Jean Antoine Arthur Gris, and transferred to Cyathopsis in 2005 by Christopher John Quinn.
Stenostomum is a genus of flowering plant in the family Rubiaceae, native from southern Mexico to tropical South America. The genus was established by Karl Friedrich von Gaertner in 1806.
