Rose

The leaves are borne alternately on the stem. In most species they are 5 to 15 centimetres (2.0 to 5.9 in) long, pinnate, with (3–) 5–9 (–13) leaflets and basal stipules; the leaflets usually have a serrated margin, and often a few small prickles on the underside of the stem. Most roses aredeciduous but a few (particularly from South east Asia) are evergreen or nearly so.

The hybrid garden rose "Amber Flush"

The flowers of most species have five petals, with the exception of Rosa sericea, which usually has only four. Each petal is divided into two distinct lobes and is usually white or pink, though in a few species yellow or red. Beneath the petals are five sepals (or in the case of some Rosa sericea, four). These may be long enough to be visible when viewed from above and appear as green points alternating with the rounded petals. There are multiple superior ovaries that develop intoachenes.^[4] Roses are insect-pollinated in nature.

The aggregate fruit of the rose is a berry-like structure called a rose hip. Many of the domestic cultivars do not produce hips, as the flowers are so tightly petalled that they do not provide access for pollination. The hips of most species are red, but a few (e.g. Rosa pimpinellifolia) have dark purple to black hips. Each hip comprises an outer fleshy layer, the hypanthium, which contains 5–160 "seeds" (technically dry single-seeded fruits called achenes) embedded in a matrix of fine, but stiff, hairs. Rose hips of some species, especially the dog rose (Rosa canina) and rugosa rose (Rosa rugosa), are very rich in vitamin C, among the richest sources of any plant. The hips are eaten by fruit-eating birds such as thrushes and waxwings, which then disperse the seeds in their droppings. Some birds, particularly finches, also eat the seeds.

Rose thorns are actually prickles – outgrowths of the epidermis.

While the sharp objects along a rose stem are commonly called "thorns", they are technically prickles — outgrowths of the epidermis (the outer layer of tissue of the stem). (True thorns, as produced by e.g. Citrus or Pyracantha, are modified stems, which always originate at a node and which have nodes and internodes along the length of the thorn itself.) Rose prickles are typically sickle-shaped hooks, which aid the rose in hanging onto other vegetation when growing over it. Some species such as Rosa rugosa and Rosa pimpinellifolia have densely packed straight prickles, probably an adaptation to reduce browsing by animals, but also possibly an adaptation to trap wind-blown sandand so reduce erosion and protect their roots (both of these species grow naturally on coastal sand dunes). Despite the presence of prickles, roses are frequently browsed by deer. A few species of roses have only vestigial prickles that have no points.

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Think again

After a period of exploration sponsored by major European nations, the first successful English settlement was established in 1607. Europeans brought horses, cattle, and hogs to the Americas and, in turn, took back to Europe maize, turkeys, potatoes, tobacco, beans, and squash. Many explorers and early settlers died after being exposed to new diseases in the Americas. The effects of new Eurasian diseases carried by the colonists, especially smallpox and measles, were much worse for the Native Americans, as they had no immunityto them. They suffered epidemics and died in very large numbers, usually before large-scale European settlement began. Their societies were disrupted and hollowed out by the scale of deaths.^[6][7]

Spanish, Dutch, and French colonization[edit]

Juan Ponce de León (Santervás de Campos, Valladolid, Spain). He was one of the first Europeans to arrive to the current U.S. because led the first European expedition to Florida, which he named.

Main articles: Spanish colonization of the Americas, Dutch colonization of the Americas and French colonization of the Americas

Spanish explorers were the first Europeans with Christopher Columbus' second expedition, to reach Puerto Rico on November 19, 1493; others reached Florida in 1513.^[8] Spanish expeditions quickly reached the Appalachian Mountains, the Mississippi River, the Grand Canyon^[9] and the Great Plains. In 1540, Hernando de Soto undertook an extensive exploration of the Southeast. That same year, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado explored from Arizona to central Kansas.^[10] Small Spanish settlements eventually grew to become important cities, such as San Antonio, Texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Los Angeles, California; and San Francisco, California. ^[11]

European territorial claims in North America, c. 1750

  France

  Great Britain

  Spain

New Netherland was a 17th-century Dutch colony centered on present-day New York City and theHudson River Valley; the Dutch traded furs with the Native Americans to the north. The colony served as a barrier to expansion from New England. Despite being Calvinists and building the Reformed Church in America, the Dutch were tolerant of other religions and cultures. The colony, which was taken over by Britain in 1664, left an enduring legacy on American cultural and political life; this includes secular broad-mindedness and mercantile pragmatism in the city as well as rural traditionalism in the countryside (typified by the story of Rip Van Winkle). Notable Americans of Dutch descent include Martin Van Buren, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Rooseveltand the Frelinghuysens.^[12]

New France was the area colonized by France from 1534 to 1763. There were few permanent settlers outside Quebec and Acadia, but the French had f

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life of Mario

The date of the start of the history of the United States is a subject of constant debate among historians. Older textbooks start with the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 and emphasize the European background, or they start around 1600 and emphasize the American frontier. In recent decades American schools and universities typically have shifted back in time to include more on the colonial period and much more on the prehistory of the Native peoples.^[1][2]

Indigenous people lived in what is now the United States for thousands of years before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from England, after 1600. The Spanish had small settlements in Florida and the Southwest, and the French along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast. By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies contained two and a half million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. In the 1760s the British government imposed a series of new taxes while rejecting the American argument that any new taxes had to be approved by the people (see Stamp Act 1765). Tax resistance, especially the Boston Tea Party (1774), led to punitive laws (the Intolerable Acts) by Parliament designed to end self-government in Massachusetts. American Patriots (as they called themselves) adhered to a political ideology called republicanism that emphasized civic duty, virtue, and opposition to corruption, fancy luxuries and aristocracy.

All thirteen colonies united in a Congress that called on them to write new state constitutions. After armed conflict began in Massachusetts, Patriots drove the royal officials out of every colony and assembled in mass meetings and conventions. Those Patriot governments in the colonies unanimously empowered their delegates to Congress to declare independence. In 1776, Congress declared that there was a new, independent nation, the United States of America, not just a collection of disparate colonies. With large-scale military and financial support from France and military leadership by General George Washington, the American Patriots rebelled against British rule and succeeded in the Revolutionary War. The peace treaty of 1783 gave the new nation the land east of the Mississippi River (except Florida and Canada, and Spain disputed the Mississippi Territory until 1795) and confirmed Great Britain's recognition of the United States as a nation. The central government established by the Articles of Confederation proved ineffectual at providing stability, as it had no authority to collect taxes and had no executive officer. Congress called a convention to meet secretly in Philadelphia in 1787 to revise the Articles of Confederation. It wrote a new Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee inalienable rights. With Washington as the Union's first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief political and financial adviser, a strong central government was created. When Thomas Jefferson became president he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, doubling the size of the United States. A second and final war with Britain was fought in 1812.

Encouraged by the notion of Manifest Destiny, federal territory expanded all the way to the Pacific. The U.S. always was large in terms of area, but its population was small, only 4 million in 1790. Population growth was rapid, reaching 7.2 million in 1810, 32 million in 1860, 76 million in 1900, 132 million in 1940, and 321 million in 2015. Economic growth in terms of overall GDP was even faster. However the nation's military strength was quite limited in peacetime before 1940. The expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners. The expansion of slavery was increasingly controversial and fueled political and constitutional battles, which were resolved by compromises. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason–Dixon line by 1804, but the South continued to profit off the institution, producing high-value cotton exports to feed increasing high demand in Europe. The 1860 presidential election of Republican Abraham Lincoln was on a platform of ending the expansion of slavery and putting it on a path to extinction. Seven cotton-based deep South slave states seceded and later founded the Confederacy months before Lincoln's inauguration. No nation ever recognized the Confederacy, but it opened the war by attacking Fort Sumter in 1861. A surge of nationalist outrage in the North fueled a long, intense American Civil War (1861-1865). It was fought largely in the South as the overwhelming material and manpower advantages of the North proved decisive in a long war. The war's result was restoration of the Union, the impoverishment of the South, and the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction era (1863–1877), legal and voting rights were extended to the freed slave. The national government emerged much stronger, and because of the Fourteenth Amendment, it gained the explicit duty to protect individual rights. However, when white Democrats regained their power in the South during the 1870s, often by paramilitary suppression of voting, they passed Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy, and new disfranchisingconstitutions that prevented most African Americans and many poor whites from voting, a situation that continued for decades until gains of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and passage of federal legislation to enforce constitutional rights.^[3]

The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the Northeast and Midwest and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was completed with the w

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left and right

Humans are one of the few creatures on this planet who have the capability of ignoring our basic survival instinct. We jump out of perfectly good airplanes — something that still sets off alarms in the most veteran skydivers — and we push ourselves to the edge of death and back with physical demands on our bodies that defy reason with activities like ultra-marathons in the desert, living in microgravity, and setting the world record for holding one’s breath under water.

Yet as contradictory as it sounds, testing these limits is probably what m

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trial post

You can’t expect the people who report to you to work to or maintain standards
that you don’t keep yourself. Therefore, you need to avoid having
double standards! Developing double standards without realising it is all
too easy.
Be careful of unintentionally allowing double standards:
✓ Don’t make allowances for a person falling below your standard regarding
an aspect of work or behaviour just because that person is highly
skilled in other aspects. Some people are naturally more skilled or
proficient at doing certain tasks than their colleagues, and you need to
organise work to make best use of the collective talents of your team;
but don’t allow anyone to fall below the overall standards you expect
everyone to achieve.
✓ Don’t show favouritism towards certain team members. Be careful about
turning a ‘blind eye’ towards people who fail to maintain the team’s standards
simply because you like them.
Noticing that the standards of work and behaviour in your team are falling can
sometimes be difficult. Keep a constant lookout for early signs of standards
falling because, just as a careless mountaineer can fall down a crevasse covered
by snow, you need to discover problems sooner rather than later!
Acting Before Avalanches
When avalanches happen, they carry away everything in their path
and bury it in deep snow. You may find that things come crashing down
around you like an avalanche if you don’t notice or ignore that standards
are falling in your team as regards the work itself or how members of your
team are behaving. Recovering from such problems can be difficult and
time-consuming. We explore why and how you should avoid work avalanches
in the next two sections.
396 Book IV: Increasing Productivity and Performance
Appreciating the dangers of delay
Putting off talking to someone about an unacceptable standard of work or
behaviour can be all too easy, particularly if you:
✓ Are a busy person; you have good intentions regarding discussing the
issue with the person but never get round to acting on them!
✓ Don’t like having difficult conversations – and not many people do.
✓ Would be stepping outside of your comfort zone by raising the problem
with the person.
Be aware of these common dangers of delaying taking action:
✓ You accept a lower standard. When people fail to meet your standard
and you don’t raise the problem promptly, they think that you’re allowing
it to happen. For example, if a person is occasionally late arriving
at work and you don’t raise the issue of timekeeping, that person may
think that arriving late is okay. If you do not notice that the standard
isn’t being met, the affect on the other person is the same: she may
assume you don’t mind him arriving late.
✓ You risk a bad apple infecting others. If you allow one person’s work or
behaviour to fall below your expected standard, other team members may
notice your inactivity and question why they should work to that standard
when their colleague is being allowed to get away with not meeting
it. For example, you may find that you’ve a growing timekeeping problem
within your team if you don’t take prompt action with a poor timekeeper.
✓ Your credibility is damaged. Members of your team who have high standards
start to wonder why you don’t take action: your credibility can be
damaged by allowing a team member to fail to meet the team’s standards.
✓ Your job becomes more difficult. Tackling the problem of unacceptable
performance or behaviour becomes more difficult by not acting
promptly because:
• The problem grows due to the ‘bad apple’ effect mentioned above.
• You may have to explain why you didn’t act sooner; the person
who’s not meeting your standards may ask, ‘Why didn’t you raise
this issue with me earlier?’.
Applying the golden rule of ‘Now’
A golden rule to adopt regarding when to raise an unacceptable standard of
work or behaviour is: Do it Now!
Chapter 4: Leading People to Peak Performance 397
Book IV
Increasing
Productivity
and
Performance
When you act as soon as you notice the problem, you can avoid the dangers
mentioned in the preceding section and build your self-esteem by successfully
tackling and dealing with problems with people – or people problems!
Another good general principle to adopt in leading people is to praise people
in public and criticise them (constructively) in private. The following are the
main benefits of adopting this principle:
✓ Praising people in public for achieving your standards means that:
• They get the public recognition they deserve.
• You reinforce high standards by talking publicly about a person
achieving those standards.
• Their work colleagues recognise that they also have to achieve
those standards if they want to be recognised for doing a good job.
✓ Constructively criticising people who aren’t meeting

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Trial Post

This is my new post and trial post. I thank you.

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