I. Background Information
Charles Robert Darwin（1809 –1882）was born on February 26, 1809 in Shrewsbury, England. He was the fifth child and second son of Robert Waring Darwin and Susannah Wedgwood. Darwin was the British naturalist who became famous for his theories of evolution and natural selection. Like several scientists before him, Darwin believed all the life on earth evolved over millions of years from a few common ancestors.
From 1831 to 1836 Darwin served as naturalist aboard the Beagle on a British science expedition around the world. In South America Darwin found fossils of extinct animals that were similar to modern species. On the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean he noticed many variations among plants and animals of the same general type as those in South America. The expedition visited places around the world, and Darwin studied plants and animals everywhere he went, collecting specimens for further study.
Upon his return to London Darwin conducted through research of his notes and specimens. Out of this study grew several related theories: one, evolution did occur; two, evolutionary change was gradual, requiring thousands to millions of years; three, the primary mechanism for evolution was a process called natural selection; and four, the millions of species alive today arose from a single original life form through a branching process called "specialization."
Darwin's theory of evolutionary selection holds that variation within species occurs randomly and that the survival or extinction of each organism is determined by that organism's ability to adapt to its environment. He set these theories forth in his book called, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" (1859) or "The Origin of Species" for short. After the publication of Origin of Species, Darwin continued to write on botany, geology, and zoology until his death in 1882. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Gregor Mendel was born in Heinzendorf, Austria on July 22, 1822. He died in Brno, Austria January 6, 1884. Mendel's first presentation was on his eight years of experimentation with artificial plant hybridization. During his studies he became a member of the Zoologist-botanisher Vernin in Vienna. His first two communications were published in 1853 to 1854. Both articles contained information about damage to plants by insects. Between 1856 to 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested almost 28,000 plants. His explanation was that hybrid germinal and pollen cells that are in their composition correspond in equal number to all constant forms resulting from the combinations of traits united through fertilization. Mendel's rediscovery of his works brought a close to an era of speculation on heredity. Therefore Mendel opened a new pathway of study on heredity to reveal a new mechanism operating in the sense of evolution.
Turesson, Gte Wilhelm (Sweden 1892-1970) Turesson's fame rests on an impressive set of "common environment" experimental growth studies conducted over the period 1919-1927. At that time he became "a pioneer in the use of experimental methods to detect genetic differences between races of plant species that adapt them to different habitats.
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), is often called the Father of Taxonomy. His system for naming, ranking, and classifying organisms is still in wide use today (with many changes). His ideas on classification have influenced generations of biologists during and after his own lifetime, even those opposed to the philosophical and theological roots of his work.
He was born on May 23, 1707, in southern Sweden. Carl showed a deep love of plants and a fascination with their names from a very early age. Carl disappointed his parents by showing neither aptitude nor desire for the priesthood, but his family was somewhat consoled when Linnaeus entered the University of Lund in 1727 to study medicine. A year later, he transferred to the University of Uppsala, the most prestigious university in Sweden. Most of Linaeus's time at Uppsala was spent collecting and studying plants, his true love. At the time, training in botany was part of the medical curriculum, for every doctor had to prepare and prescribe drugs derived from medicinal plants. Despite being in hard financial straits, Linnaeus mounted a botanical and ethnographical expedition to Lapland in 1731. In 1734 he mounted another expedition to central Sweden.
Linnaeus went to the Netherlands in 1735, promptly finished his medical degree at the University of Harderwijk, and then enrolled in the University of Leiden for further studies. That same year, he published the first edition of his classification of living things, the Systema Naturae. Returning to Sweden in 1738, he practiced medicine and lectured in Stockholm At Uppsala, he restored the University's botanical garden made three more expeditions to various parts of Sweden, and inspired a generation of students. Nineteen of his students went out on these voyages of discovery to all parts of the world. Perhaps his most famous student, Daniel Solander, was the naturalist on Captain James Cook's first round-the-world voyage, and brought back the first plant collections from Australia and the South Pacific to Europe.
Before Linnaeus, species naming practices varied. Many biologists gave the species they described long, unwieldy Latin names, which could be altered at will; a scientist comparing two descriptions of species might not be able to tell which organisms were being referred to. The need for a workable naming system was made even greater by the huge number of plants and animals that were being brought back to Europe from Asia, Africa, and the Americas. After experimenting with various alternatives, Linnaeus simplified naming immensely by designating one Latin name to indicate the genus, and one as a "shorthand" name for the species. The two names make up the binomial ("two names") species name. For instance, in his two-volume work Species Plantarum (The Species of Plants), Linnaeus renamed the briar rose Rosa canina. This binomial system rapidly became the standard system for naming species. Although Linnaeus was not the first to use binomials, he was the first to use them consistently, and for this reason, Latin names that naturalists used before Linnaeus are not usually considered valid under the rules of nomenclature.
Daniel Solander (1733 - 1782) was born in Pitea, Sweden, on 19 February 1733, died and died in London, England, on 16 May 1782. He was Linnaeus’s pupil. He came to England in 1760 and worked as an assistant at the British Museum from 1763. Employed by Joseph Banks in 1768, he joined him on Cook's first voyage to the Pacific. On their return in 1771 he became Banks' botanist/librarian and lived in his house at Soho Square. He described very little himself, but his specimens, manuscript notes and names have been used by others. His herbarium is now at BM, with some duplicates elsewhere.
Extracted from: A.E.Orchard (1999) A History of Systematic Botany in Australia, in Flora of Australia Vol.1, 2nd ed., ABRS. [consult for source references]
Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) was born in 1743, the only son of a wealthy land-owning family. From an early age, his declared passion was natural history, and in particular, botany. Shortly after inheriting his family's fortune in the early 1760's he chose to pursue this passion to the full. In 1766 he travelled to Newfoundland and Labrador to collect plants, animals and rocks and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the same year.
When the Royal Society was successful in initiating Captain Cook's 1768 expedition to Tahiti for astronomical observations, Banks obtained permission from the Admiralty to join the venture. For him, this was like a present-day scientist being given the chance of a trip to another planet, a chance to study new plants in unknown lands. They made collections and observations in South America, Tahiti and New Zealand before reaching Australia. His major landfalls on the eastern coast of Australia were at Botany Bay (28 April - 5 May 1770) and at the Endeavour River (17 June - 3 August).
The plant material collected and sorted on the voyage was extensive, with the herbarium specimens accounting for about 110 new genera and 1300 new species. After his triumphant return from this voyage, Banks travelled to Scotland, Wales, Holland and Iceland, collecting more and more 'curiosities'. Among a host of other activities, including the running of his estates, he controlled the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and was a Trustee of the British Museum. In 1778 he also became President of the Royal Society, an office which he held until his death in 1820. He was knighted in 1781.
II. Goals
a. talk about botany
b. express procedures:
The primary goal was to… Firstly…
Secondly… Then…
Thirdly… Finally/Lastly…
c. review the object
d. learn the following expressions:
procedure, rose, strawberry, lemon, bunch, growth, merely, herb, classify, identification, male, promote, botanical, privilege, cozy, appetite wealth, appoint, calculate, astronomy, expense, cocoa, enterprise, settlement, accumulate, abandon, straw, pineapple, tone, reward, technician, nowhere, altogether, appearance, output, latter, distinguish millimeter
look out for, on a large scale, year after year, pass away, name… after
in detail
III. Language points in Warming-up, Listening and Speaking sections
1. learn the following names for plants:
tulip 郁金香 rose玫瑰 sunflower 向日葵 peony 牡丹 pumpkin南瓜
strawberry 草莓 soybean 黄豆
2. match vt. be equal to or corresponding with (in quality, color, design, etc) 相当；相配
e.g. The carpets should match the curtains.
She was wearing a brown dress wit hat and gloves to match.
注意match与fit和suit的区别：match两个人或东西相配（主语和宾语同类）；fit：某个东西适合某人（大小合适）；suit：某个东西适合某人的身份气质等。 fit 和suit都是以物作主语，以人作宾语。
e.g. The dress fits me. 这件衣服大小合适。
The dress suits me. 这件衣服很适合我穿。
3. family n. group of living things or of languages, with common characteristics and sources 族；科；系；语系
e.g. Lions and tigers are animals of the cat.
4. experiment with 以……为对象作试验
e.g. They experiment with the washing machine to make it save electricity.
5. dried vegetables 干化的蔬菜
6. preserved cabbage 贮存的白菜
Exercises:
I. Choose the best answer.
1. I like the tie. It really ________ my suit.
A. match B. fits C. suits D. equals
2. Lions and tigers are of the same ________.
A. group B. class C. family D. animal
3. We will ________ the plant to make it grow in this area.
A. experiment B. experiment with
4. In the past, we had to eat ________ cabbage in winter.
A. preserving B. preserved
Keys:
1. A 2. C 3. B 4. B
II. Tomatoes are suitable to be grown in pots in the corner of your balcony. Please explain how to grow and take care of tomato plants.
Keys:
1 Take a pot that is big enough to grow a tomato plant and clean it well with hot water. Fill the pot with earth of good quality that does not contain too many stones, mixed with some fertilizer.
2 Prepare the tomato seeds by putting them on wet paper towels for a few days, in a warm place out of the sun. Wait till the seeds swell up and a little root has developed.
3 Plant two or three seeds in the pot and cover them with some earth. Give some water.
4 Water the young plants every day, but make sure the earth is not too wet.
5 Once the tomato plants have grown up, place the pot in a sunny corner. Regularly water the plant, especially when it starts developing fruit.