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| | Torn to Ribbons in the Desert: Science News Online, Oct. 27, 2001 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14) |
 | | The genus name Welwitschia comes from the explorer of Angola, Friedrich Welwitsch, and taxonomists have institutionalized the astonishment of the Welwitschia discoverers by settling on the species epithet mirabilis. |
 | | Darwin was fascinated when he learned of Welwitschia and its extraordinary mixture of advanced and primitive characteristics and called it "the vegetable Ornithorhynchus," the platypus of the plant world. |
 | | New York, N.Y. In your article on Welwitschia mirabilis, you state that "botanists have classified it with conifers." On the contrary, botanists classify it in the phylum Gnetophyta, along with Gnetum and Ephedra, rather than in the phylum Coniferophyta. |
| www.sciencenews.org /articles/20011027/bob12.asp (2845 words) |
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