64-526: See text Mandragora is a plant genus belonging to the nightshade family ( Solanaceae ). Members of the genus are known as mandrakes . Between three and five species are placed in the genus. The one or two species found around the Mediterranean constitute the mandrake of ancient writers such as Dioscorides . Two or three further species are found eastwards into China. All are perennial herbaceous plants , with large tap roots and leaves in
128-498: A New World family. Mandragora is suggested to have originated around 20 million years ago, arriving in Eurasia through the agency of birds, with the main split between the species occurring around 10 million years ago. As of March 2015, major online plant databases (such as Tropicos , The Plant List , and GRIN Taxonomy for Plants ) accept different numbers of species in the genus Mandragora . Three species are accepted in
192-465: A 1998 review of the genus and by GRIN. Other sources keep M. autumnalis and M. chinghaiensis as separate species. Like many members of the Solanaceae, species of Mandragora contain highly biologically active alkaloids, tropane alkaloids in particular. Hanuš et al. reviewed the phytochemistry of Mandragora species. More than 80 substances have been identified; their paper gives
256-785: A Muslim majority in the Levant is presumed to have been reached by the 13th century. The majority of Levantine Muslims are Sunnis adhering to the four madhhabs ( Hanafi , Shafi'i , Hanbali and Maliki ). Islamic minorities include the Alawites and Nizari Ismailis in Syria, and Twelver Shiites in Lebanon . Levantine Christian groups include Greek Orthodox ( Antiochian Greek ), Syriac Orthodox , Eastern Catholic ( Syriac Catholic , Melkite and Maronite ), Roman Catholic ( Latin ), Nestorian , and Protestant . Armenians mostly belong to
320-496: A berry ). The genus Mandragora was first used in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus in the first edition of Species Plantarum where the Mediterranean species Mandragora officinarum was described, which is thus the type species of the genus. (Linnaeus later changed his mind and in 1759 placed M. officinarum in the genus Atropa as A. mandragora .) Jackson and Berry (1979) and Ungricht et al. (1998) have documented
384-551: A protective response. The first such plant receptors were identified in rice and in Arabidopsis thaliana . Plants have some of the largest genomes of all organisms. The largest plant genome (in terms of gene number) is that of wheat ( Triticum aestivum ), predicted to encode ≈94,000 genes and thus almost 5 times as many as the human genome . The first plant genome sequenced was that of Arabidopsis thaliana which encodes about 25,500 genes. In terms of sheer DNA sequence,
448-420: A range of physical and biotic stresses which cause DNA damage , but they can tolerate and repair much of this damage. Plants reproduce to generate offspring, whether sexually , involving gametes , or asexually , involving ordinary growth. Many plants use both mechanisms. When reproducing sexually, plants have complex lifecycles involving alternation of generations . One generation, the sporophyte , which
512-428: A rosette at the base of the plant. The flowers are sometimes borne on a short stalk ( scape ), and are solitary, with whorls of five parts. The sepals are joined at the base, as are the petals , both in the shape of a lobed bell. The stamens are shorter than the petals, joined to the floral tube towards the base. The ovary has two chambers ( locules ). After fertilization, a yellow or orange fruit forms ( botanically
576-528: A variety of Arabic descended from the pre-Islamic Arabic dialects of Syria and Hejazi Arabic , but retaining significant influence from Western Middle Aramaic . Levantine Arabic is usually classified as North Levantine Arabic in Lebanon, Syria, and parts of Turkey, and South Levantine Arabic in Palestine and Jordan. Each of these encompasses a spectrum of regional or urban/rural variations. In addition to
640-404: Is diploid (with 2 sets of chromosomes ), gives rise to the next generation, the gametophyte , which is haploid (with one set of chromosomes). Some plants also reproduce asexually via spores . In some non-flowering plants such as mosses, the sexual gametophyte forms most of the visible plant. In seed plants (gymnosperms and flowering plants), the sporophyte forms most of the visible plant, and
704-547: Is a similar process. Structures such as runners enable plants to grow to cover an area, forming a clone . Many plants grow food storage structures such as tubers or bulbs which may each develop into a new plant. Some non-flowering plants, such as many liverworts, mosses and some clubmosses, along with a few flowering plants, grow small clumps of cells called gemmae which can detach and grow. Plants use pattern-recognition receptors to recognize pathogens such as bacteria that cause plant diseases. This recognition triggers
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#1732798227867768-540: Is a term used to define the historical and geographical subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west and core West Asia , or by the political term, Middle East to the east . In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is equivalent to Cyprus and a stretch of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea in western Asia: i.e.
832-544: Is also used for modern events, peoples, states or parts of states in the same region, namely Cyprus , Egypt , Iraq , Israel , Jordan , Lebanon , Palestine , Syria , and Turkey are sometimes considered Levant countries (compare with Near East , Middle East , Eastern Mediterranean and West Asia ). Several researchers include the island of Cyprus in Levantine studies, including the Council for British Research in
896-411: Is explicitly mentioned as the source of a "mandrake" or "mandragora" in some sources. Plant See text Plants are the eukaryotes that form the kingdom Plantae ; they are predominantly photosynthetic . This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight , using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria to produce sugars from carbon dioxide and water, using
960-496: Is known as botany , a branch of biology . All living things were traditionally placed into one of two groups, plants and animals . This classification dates from Aristotle (384–322 BC), who distinguished different levels of beings in his biology , based on whether living things had a "sensitive soul" or like plants only a "vegetative soul". Theophrastus , Aristotle's student, continued his work in plant taxonomy and classification. Much later, Linnaeus (1707–1778) created
1024-512: Is literally "rising", deriving from Latin orior 'rise'. The notion of the Levant has undergone a dynamic process of historical evolution in usage, meaning, and understanding. While the term "Levantine" originally referred to the European residents of the eastern Mediterranean region, it later came to refer to regional "native" and "minority" groups. The term became current in English in
1088-1073: Is ultimately from the Latin word levare , meaning 'lift, raise'. Similar etymologies are found in Greek Ἀνατολή Anatolē ( cf. Anatolia 'the direction of sunrise'), in Germanic Morgenland ( lit. ' morning land ' ), in Italian (as in Riviera di Levante , the portion of the Liguria coast east of Genoa ), in Hungarian Kelet ('east'), in Spanish and Catalan Levante and Llevant , ('the place of rising'), and in Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ ('east'). Most notably, "Orient" and its Latin source oriens meaning 'east',
1152-644: The Antarctic flora , consisting of algae, mosses, liverworts, lichens, and just two flowering plants, have adapted to the prevailing conditions on that southern continent. Plants are often the dominant physical and structural component of the habitats where they occur. Many of the Earth's biomes are named for the type of vegetation because plants are the dominant organisms in those biomes, such as grassland , savanna , and tropical rainforest . Levant The Levant ( / l ə ˈ v æ n t / lə- VANT )
1216-669: The Armenian Apostolic Church . There are also Levantines or Franco-Levantines who adhere to Roman Catholicism . There are also Assyrians belonging to the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church . Other religious groups in the Levant include Jews , Samaritans , Yazidis and Druze . Most populations in the Levant speak Levantine Arabic ( شامي , Šāmī ),
1280-719: The Caucasus Mountains, or any part of the Arabian Peninsula proper. Cilicia (in Asia Minor) and the Sinai Peninsula (Asian Egypt) are sometimes included. As a name for the contemporary region, several dictionaries consider Levant to be archaic today. Both the noun Levant and the adjective Levantine are now commonly used to describe the ancient and modern culture area formerly called Syro-Palestinian or Biblical: archaeologists now speak of
1344-706: The Cretaceous so rapid that Darwin called it an " abominable mystery ". Conifers diversified from the Late Triassic onwards, and became a dominant part of floras in the Jurassic . In 2019, a phylogeny based on genomes and transcriptomes from 1,153 plant species was proposed. The placing of algal groups is supported by phylogenies based on genomes from the Mesostigmatophyceae and Chlorokybophyceae that have since been sequenced. Both
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#17327982278671408-712: The Levant ( Mandragora autumnalis ) from those found in the rest of the Mediterranean area ( Mandragora officinarum ) suggest that there are two clades in the genus - one based in the Mediterranean and beyond to Turkmenistan and Iran, and one in the Sino-Himalayan region. A simplified cladogram based on these studies is shown below. In one of the studies, M. chinghaiensis was embedded within M. caulescens . Mandragora turcomanica Mandragora autumnalis Mandragora officinarum Mandragora caulescens Mandragora chinghaiensis The Solanaceae are primarily
1472-582: The Levant Company to trade with the Ottoman Empire . The name Levant States was used to refer to the French mandate over Syria and Lebanon after World War I . This is probably the reason why the term Levant has come to be used more specifically to refer to modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and the island of Cyprus . Some scholars mistakenly believed that it derives from
1536-735: The Southern Levant . While the usage of the term "Levant" in academia has been restricted to the fields of archeology and literature, there is a recent attempt to reclaim the notion of the Levant as a category of analysis in political and social sciences. Two academic journals were launched in the early 2010s using the word: the Journal of Levantine Studies , published by the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and The Levantine Review , published by Boston College . The word Levant has been used in some translations of
1600-457: The carpels or ovaries , which develop into fruits that contain seeds . Fruits may be dispersed whole, or they may split open and the seeds dispersed individually. Plants reproduce asexually by growing any of a wide variety of structures capable of growing into new plants. At the simplest, plants such as mosses or liverworts may be broken into pieces, each of which may regrow into whole plants. The propagation of flowering plants by cuttings
1664-751: The glaucophytes , in the clade Archaeplastida . There are about 380,000 known species of plants, of which the majority, some 260,000, produce seeds . They range in size from single cells to the tallest trees . Green plants provide a substantial proportion of the world's molecular oxygen; the sugars they create supply the energy for most of Earth's ecosystems and other organisms , including animals, either eat plants directly or rely on organisms which do so. Grain , fruit , and vegetables are basic human foods and have been domesticated for millennia. People use plants for many purposes , such as building materials , ornaments, writing materials , and, in great variety, for medicines . The scientific study of plants
1728-1003: The "chlorophyte algae" and the "streptophyte algae" are treated as paraphyletic (vertical bars beside phylogenetic tree diagram) in this analysis, as the land plants arose from within those groups. The classification of Bryophyta is supported both by Puttick et al. 2018, and by phylogenies involving the hornwort genomes that have also since been sequenced. Rhodophyta [REDACTED] Glaucophyta [REDACTED] Chlorophyta [REDACTED] Prasinococcales Mesostigmatophyceae Chlorokybophyceae Spirotaenia [REDACTED] Klebsormidiales [REDACTED] Chara [REDACTED] Coleochaetales [REDACTED] Hornworts [REDACTED] Liverworts [REDACTED] Mosses [REDACTED] Lycophytes [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Gymnosperms [REDACTED] Angiosperms [REDACTED] Plant cells have distinctive features that other eukaryotic cells (such as those of animals) lack. These include
1792-586: The 16th century, along with the first English merchant adventurers in the region; English ships appeared in the Mediterranean in the 1570s, and the English merchant company signed its agreement (" capitulations ") with the Ottoman Sultan in 1579. The English Levant Company was founded in 1581 to trade with the Ottoman Empire , and in 1670 the French Compagnie du Levant [ fr ]
1856-483: The 1820s, Antonio Bertoloni used flowering time to name two species as Mandragora vernalis , the spring-flowering mandrake, and Mandragora autumnalis , the autumn-flowering mandrake. Identifying the former as Linnaeus's M. officinarum , works such as Flora Europaea listed two Mediterranean species of Mandragora : M. officinarum and M. autumnalis . Using statistical analysis of morphological characters, Ungricht et al. found no distinct clusters among
1920-513: The Levant share not only geographic position, but cuisine , some customs, and history . They are often referred to as Levantines . The term Levant appears in English in 1497 , and originally meant 'the East ' or 'Mediterranean lands east of Italy'. It is borrowed from the French levant 'rising', referring to the rising of the sun in the east, or the point where the sun rises. The phrase
1984-543: The Levant , the UCLA Near Eastern Languages and Cultures department, Journal of Levantine Studies and the UCL Institute of Archaeology, the last of which has dated the connection between Cyprus and mainland Levant to the early Iron Age . Archaeologists seeking a neutral orientation that is neither biblical nor national have used terms such as Levantine archaeology and archaeology of
Mandragora (genus) - Misplaced Pages Continue
2048-604: The Levant and of Levantine archaeology ; food scholars speak of Levantine cuisine ; and the Latin Christians of the Levant continue to be called Levantine Christians . The Levant has been described as the "crossroads of Western Asia , the Eastern Mediterranean, and Northeast Africa ", and in geological ( tectonic ) terms as the "northwest of the Arabian Plate ". The populations of
2112-801: The amount of cytoplasm stays the same. Most plants are multicellular . Plant cells differentiate into multiple cell types, forming tissues such as the vascular tissue with specialized xylem and phloem of leaf veins and stems , and organs with different physiological functions such as roots to absorb water and minerals, stems for support and to transport water and synthesized molecules, leaves for photosynthesis, and flowers for reproduction. Plants photosynthesize , manufacturing food molecules ( sugars ) using energy obtained from light . Plant cells contain chlorophylls inside their chloroplasts, which are green pigments that are used to capture light energy. The end-to-end chemical equation for photosynthesis is: This causes plants to release oxygen into
2176-431: The atmosphere. Green plants provide a substantial proportion of the world's molecular oxygen, alongside the contributions from photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria. Plants that have secondarily adopted a parasitic lifestyle may lose the genes involved in photosynthesis and the production of chlorophyll. Growth is determined by the interaction of a plant's genome with its physical and biotic environment. Factors of
2240-467: The basis of the modern system of scientific classification , but retained the animal and plant kingdoms , naming the plant kingdom the Vegetabilia. When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a specific group of organisms or taxa , it usually refers to one of four concepts. From least to most inclusive, these four groupings are: There are about 382,000 accepted species of plants, of which
2304-526: The boundaries of the Levant as follows. A distinction is made between the main subregions of the Levant, the northern and the southern: The island of Cyprus is also included as a third subregion in the archaeological region of the Levant: The vast majority of Levantines are Muslims . After the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 7th century, Islam was first introduced into the region. However,
2368-531: The countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece in Southern Europe to Egypt and Cyrenaica (Eastern Libya) in Northern Africa . In the 13th and 14th centuries, the term levante was used for Italian maritime commerce in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Greece, Anatolia , Syria-Palestine , and Egypt , that is, the lands east of Venice . Eventually
2432-488: The detailed chemical structure of 37 of them. The different parts of the plant contain different proportions and concentrations of alkaloids, with the roots having the highest concentrations. Alkaloids present include atropine , apoatropine , belladonnine , cuscohygrine , hyoscyamine , scopolamine (hyoscine), 3α-tigloyloxytropane , and 3α,6β-ditigloyloxytropane . M. caulescens and M. turcomanica are also reported to contain anisodamine . Clinical reports of
2496-488: The development of forests in swampy environments dominated by clubmosses and horsetails, including some as large as trees, and the appearance of early gymnosperms , the first seed plants . The Permo-Triassic extinction event radically changed the structures of communities. This may have set the scene for the evolution of flowering plants in the Triassic (~ 200 million years ago ), with an adaptive radiation in
2560-403: The effects of consumption of plants described as M. autumnalis ( M. offinarum sensu lato ) include severe symptoms similar to those of atropine poisoning, including blurred vision, dilation of the pupils ( mydriasis ), dryness of the mouth, difficulty in urinating, dizziness, headache, vomiting, blushing, and a rapid heart rate ( tachycardia ). Hyperactivity and hallucinations also occurred in
2624-570: The form of a rosette . Individual flowers are bell-shaped, whitish through to violet, and followed by yellow or orange berries . Like many members of the Solanaceae, species of Mandragora contain highly biologically active alkaloids that make the plants poisonous. Their roots in particular have a long use in traditional medicine . Mandrakes are involved in many myths and superstitions. Species of Mandragora are perennial herbaceous plants. They have large vertical tap roots, sometimes forked. Their stems are short or virtually absent. The leaves form
Mandragora (genus) - Misplaced Pages Continue
2688-478: The fungi and some of the algae. By the definition used in this article, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (green plants), which consists of the green algae and the embryophytes or land plants ( hornworts , liverworts , mosses , lycophytes , ferns , conifers and other gymnosperms , and flowering plants ). A definition based on genomes includes the Viridiplantae, along with the red algae and
2752-409: The gametophyte is very small. Flowering plants reproduce sexually using flowers, which contain male and female parts: these may be within the same ( hermaphrodite ) flower, on different flowers on the same plant , or on different plants . The stamens create pollen , which produces male gametes that enter the ovule to fertilize the egg cell of the female gametophyte. Fertilization takes place within
2816-583: The great majority, some 283,000, produce seeds . The table below shows some species count estimates of different green plant (Viridiplantae) divisions . About 85–90% of all plants are flowering plants. Several projects are currently attempting to collect records on all plant species in online databases, e.g. the World Flora Online . Plants range in scale from single-celled organisms such as desmids (from 10 micrometres (μm) across) and picozoa (less than 3 μm across), to
2880-515: The green pigment chlorophyll . Exceptions are parasitic plants that have lost the genes for chlorophyll and photosynthesis, and obtain their energy from other plants or fungi. Most plants are multicellular , except for some green algae. Historically, as in Aristotle's biology , the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals , and included algae and fungi . Definitions have narrowed since then; current definitions exclude
2944-502: The historical region of Syria ("Greater Syria"), which includes present-day Israel , Jordan , Lebanon , Syria , the Palestinian territories and most of Turkey southwest of the middle Euphrates . Its overwhelming characteristic is that it represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia . In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the Eastern Mediterranean with its islands; that is, it included all of
3008-529: The land 1,200 million years ago , but it was not until the Ordovician , around 450 million years ago , that the first land plants appeared, with a level of organisation like that of bryophytes. However, fossils of organisms with a flattened thallus in Precambrian rocks suggest that multicellular freshwater eukaryotes existed over 1000 mya. Primitive land plants began to diversify in
3072-412: The large water-filled central vacuole , chloroplasts , and the strong flexible cell wall , which is outside the cell membrane . Chloroplasts are derived from what was once a symbiosis of a non-photosynthetic cell and photosynthetic cyanobacteria . The cell wall, made mostly of cellulose , allows plant cells to swell up with water without bursting. The vacuole allows the cell to change in size while
3136-515: The largest trees ( megaflora ) such as the conifer Sequoia sempervirens (up to 120 metres (380 ft) tall) and the angiosperm Eucalyptus regnans (up to 100 m (325 ft) tall). The naming of plants is governed by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants and the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants . The ancestors of land plants evolved in water. An algal scum formed on
3200-665: The late Silurian , around 420 million years ago . Bryophytes, club mosses, and ferns then appear in the fossil record. Early plant anatomy is preserved in cellular detail in an early Devonian fossil assemblage from the Rhynie chert . These early plants were preserved by being petrified in chert formed in silica-rich volcanic hot springs. By the end of the Devonian, most of the basic features of plants today were present, including roots, leaves and secondary wood in trees such as Archaeopteris . The Carboniferous period saw
3264-533: The majority of patients. Mandragora species have a long use in traditional medicine, extracts being used for their real or supposed aphrodisiac, hypnotic, emetic, purgative, sedative, and pain-killing effects. Tropane alkaloids are known to be effective as analgesics and anaesthetics, and can be used to increase circulation and dilate pupils, among other effects. Hyoscine and anisodamine are used medicinally in China. Continued use of M. autumnalis in folk medicine
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#17327982278673328-576: The name of Lebanon. Today the term is often used in conjunction with prehistoric or ancient historical references. Another term for "Syria-Palestine" is Ash- Shaam ( Arabic : ٱلشَّام , /ʔaʃ.ʃaːm/ ), the area that is bounded by the Taurus Mountains of Turkey in the north, the Mediterranean Sea in the west, the north Arabian Desert and Mesopotamia in the east, and Sinai in the south (which can be fully included or not). Typically, it does not include Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor),
3392-655: The north. Two minority languages are recognized: Armenian , and Cypriot Maronite Arabic , a hybrid of mostly medieval Arabic vernaculars with strong influence from contact with Turkish and Greek, spoken by approximately 1,000 people. Western Neo-Aramaic is additionally spoken in three villages in Syria: Maaloula , Jubb'adin and Bakhah . Among diaspora communities based in the Levant, Greek , Armenian and Circassian are also spoken. According to recent ancient DNA studies, Levantines derive most of their ancestry from ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of
3456-501: The physical or abiotic environment include temperature , water , light, carbon dioxide , and nutrients in the soil. Biotic factors that affect plant growth include crowding, grazing, beneficial symbiotic bacteria and fungi, and attacks by insects or plant diseases . Frost and dehydration can damage or kill plants. Some plants have antifreeze proteins , heat-shock proteins and sugars in their cytoplasm that enable them to tolerate these stresses . Plants are continuously exposed to
3520-441: The place instead of any one culture. The French mandate of Syria and Lebanon (1920–1946) was called the Levant states. Today, "Levant" is the term typically used by archaeologists and historians with reference to the history of the region. Scholars have adopted the term Levant to identify the region due to its being a "wider, yet relevant, cultural corpus" that does not have the "political overtones" of Syria-Palestine. The term
3584-464: The same tribe or subtribe as at least the first of these genera. Molecular phylogenetic studies suggest that the genus belongs in the large subfamily Solanoideae, but that within this subfamily, it is one of a number of isolated genera with no immediate relatives. It has thus been placed in its own tribe, Mandragoreae. Within the genus, studies have used different circumscriptions of the Mediterranean mandrakes. Two studies that separate plants found in
3648-469: The smallest published genome is that of the carnivorous bladderwort ( Utricularia gibba) at 82 Mb (although it still encodes 28,500 genes) while the largest, from the Norway spruce ( Picea abies ), extends over 19.6 Gb (encoding about 28,300 genes). Plants are distributed almost worldwide. While they inhabit several biomes which can be divided into a multitude of ecoregions , only the hardy plants of
3712-597: The specimens they examined and concluded that Linnaeus's M. officinarum is a single, variable species. Other sources divide M. officinarum sensu lato differently. Plants from the western Mediterranean, from Turkey westwards to the Iberian peninsula and Morocco, are placed in M. officinarum ; plants from the eastern Mediterranean, from Syria to Israel, are placed in M. autumnalis . Traditionally, Mandragora has been considered to be closely related to Atropa and Lycium , being grouped together in
3776-434: The subsequent confusion over the number of Mediterranean species of Mandragora and their scientific names. Dioscorides was among those who distinguished between "male" and "female" mandrakes, a distinction used in 1764 when Garsault published the names Mandragora mas and Mandragora foemina . The size and shape of the fruit and the colour and time of appearance of the flowers have been used to distinguish possible species. In
3840-689: The term ash-Shām as used by the organization known as ISIL, ISIS, and other names , though there is disagreement as to whether this translation is accurate. In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: c. 8000–332 BCE (OHAL; 2013), the definition of the Levant for the specific purposes of the book is synonymous to that of the Arabic " bilad al-sham , 'the land of sham [Syria]'", translating in Western parlance to greater Syria . OHAL defines
3904-530: The term was restricted to the Muslim countries of Syria-Palestine and Egypt. The term entered English in the late 15th century from French. It derives from the Italian levante , meaning "rising", implying the rising of the Sun in the east, and is broadly equivalent to the term al-Mashriq ( Arabic : ٱلْمَشْرِق , [ʔal.maʃ.riq] ), meaning "the eastern place, where the Sun rises". In 1581, England set up
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#17327982278673968-400: The varieties normally grouped together as "Levantine", a number of other varieties and dialects of Arabic are spoken in the Levant area, such as Levantine Bedawi Arabic (by Bedouins ) and Mesopotamian Arabic (in eastern Syria). Of the languages of Cyprus , the two official languages are Turkish and Greek. The most used languages by population are Greek in the south followed by Turkish in
4032-542: Was founded for the same purpose. At this time, the Far East was known as the "Upper Levant". In early 19th-century travel writing , the term sometimes incorporated certain Mediterranean provinces of the Ottoman Empire , as well as independent Greece (and especially the Greek islands ). In 19th-century archaeology, it referred to overlapping cultures in this region during and after prehistoric times, intending to reference
4096-541: Was reported in Sicily in 2014. M. caulescens (as M. chinghaiensis ) has been listed as a Chinese medicinal plant needing conservation. The presence of deliriant and hallucinogenic alkaloids and the sometimes vaguely humanoid shape of their roots have led to mandrakes being associated with a variety of myths and superstitious practices throughout history. However, the plants used in this way are not always species of Mandragora ; for example, bryony ( Bryonia )
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