Totora (plant)

Totora (Schoenoplectus californicus ssp. tatora) is a subspecies of the giant bulrush sedge. It is found in South America - notably on Lake Titicaca, the middle coast of Perú and on Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean. The genus Schoenoplectus is closely related to Scirpus and sometimes included therein.

The people of the mid-coast region of Perú have used totora to build their caballitos de totora, small rowed and straddled fishing vessels, for at least 3,000 years. The Uru people, an indigenous people predating the Inca civilization, live on Lake Titicaca upon floating islands fashioned from this plant. The Uru people also use the totora plant to make boats (balsas) of the bundled dried plant reeds.

The Rapanui people of Easter island used totora reeds - locally known as nga'atu - for thatching and to make pora (swimming aids). These are used for recreation, and were formerly employed by hopu (clan champions) to reach offshore Motu Nui in the tangata manu (bird-man) competition. How the plant arrived on the island is not clear; Thor Heyerdahl argued that it had been brought by prehistoric Peruvians but it is at least as likely to have been brought by birds. Recent work indicates that totora has been growing on Easter Island for at least 30,000 years, which is well before humans arrived on the island.

Totora

Totora may refer to the following:

See also

Totora, Oruro

Totora (Oruro) is a small town in Bolivia.

References

Coordinates: 17°47′34″S 68°08′42″W / 17.7928°S 68.145°W / -17.7928; -68.145

Totora, Cochabamba

Totora (/toʊtʊərɑː/) (in hispanicized spelling), Tutura or T'utura (Aymara and Quechua for Schoenoplectus californicus, an aquatic plant) is a town in the Carrasco Province of the Cochabamba Department in Bolivia. It is the capital and most-populous place of the Totora Municipality. As of the 2012 census, the population is 1,925. The first settlers were Inca Indians. Totora was officially settled in 1876, and declared a town by the Government of Bolivia in 1894.

History

The first settlers of the city were from the Inca Empire. From 1530 until 1722, the land Totora occupied was in control of Spaniards who mainly used the land for cocoa production. The first time the town was mentioned was in 1639, when a landowner named Don Fernando García Murillo had established a chaplaincy. The city was officially settled on 24 June 1876 after the Mizque Municipality was divided into the Mizque and the Totora Municipality. It was officially declared a city by the Bolivian Government on 27 October 1894. The first residents of Totora were wealthy landowners, traders, and textile artisans. It was also a trading stop between west and east of Bolivia.

Plant

Plants, also called green plants, are multicellular eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. They form an unranked clade Viridiplantae (Latin for green plants) that includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns, clubmosses, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae. Green plants excludes the red and brown algae, the fungi, archaea, bacteria and animals.

Green plants have cell walls with cellulose and obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts, derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are also characterized by sexual reproduction, modular and indeterminate growth, and an alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is also common.

Precise numbers are difficult to determine, but as of 2010, there are thought to be 300–315 thousand species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, are seed plants (see the table below). Green plants provide most of the world's molecular oxygen and are the basis of most of the earth's ecologies, especially on land. Plants that produce grains, fruits and vegetables form mankind's basic foodstuffs, and have been domesticated for millennia. Plants are used as ornaments and, until recently and in great variety, they have served as the source of most medicines and drugs. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology.

Plantà

The plantá (which comes from the verb to plant; in Valencian, plantà) is the act of erecting a Falla or bonfire monument, in the Fallas or the Bonfires of Saint John, festivals held respectively in March and June in different localities of the Community of Valencia (Spain).The plantà is currently considered the exact moment when the falla or bonfire is completely finished and ready to be visited, with all its “ninots” (human figures made of combustible materials, such as cardboard or wood, which has a critical or mocking nature), posters and a variety of features (lights, matted grass, interpretive signs...).

In the Fallas of Valencia, the plantá takes place on March 15, when all the Falla monuments must be positioned correctly. The reason is that the jury appointed by the Central Fallera committee has to go to the next day to assess the falla. Formerly, the plantà began and ended the same day but, due to the complexity of the monuments and the fact that the makers of Fallas are responsible for several Fallas monuments at the same time, it usually begins a few days before. The burning of the Falla or cremá is carried out four days later, on the night of March 19.

Plant (disambiguation)

A plant is a living organism that generally does not move and absorbs nutrients from its surroundings.

Plant may also refer to:

In manufacturing and engineering

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In names