Plants

Plants

Plants have been recognized since ancient times as a distinct lineage of organisms, but the precise boundaries of the group have only recently come into sharp focus. Land plants, or embryophytes, are immediately familiar as the organisms that constitute the terrestrial vegetation, dominate agriculture, and play a wide range of cultural and economic roles in human society. It is more difficult t...

Pharmaceutical Plants (plants Used in Pharmaceutical Preparations)

Electronic plants

The roots, stems, leaves, and vascular circuitry of higher plants are responsible for conveying the chemical signals that regulate growth and functions. From a certain perspective, these features are analogous to the contacts, interconnections, devices, and wires of discrete and integrated electronic circuits. Although many attempts have been made to augment plant function with electroactive ma...

Transgenic Plants

Poisonous plants.

South Africa is blessed with one of the richest floras in the world, which--not surprisingly--includes many poisonous plants. Theiler in the founding years believed that plants could be involved in the aetiologies of many of the then unexplained conditions of stock, such as gousiekte and geeldikkop. His subsequent investigations of plant poisonings largely laid the foundation for the future Sec...