國家地理:China’s Amazing Flowers 繁花似錦的中國

China has more plants than anywhere else in the temperate regions of the world. In fact, it has almost twice as many kinds of plants as there are in the United States which is about the same size and about three times as many as there are in Europe. It’s a very wonderful wealth of plant species, many of which have contributed to our gardens, like rhododendrons, and azaleas, and forsythias, to our cultivated plants like soybeans.
The reason that there’re so many plants in China is that they've survived there better. If you go back fifteen million years into the past, you find much the same kinds of plants and the animals in the United States, Europe and China. They've survived in the warm temperate to subtropical forests that stretch right across the middle of China.
In those forests of China we have surviving species like gingko, the maidenhair tree which has been in cultivation in Europe and North America since the 17th century. A wonderful relic in those forests is the dove tree, Davidia. It’s called the dove tree because the fluttering bracts that hang down from the clusters of flowers look like doves flying.
Another example is the dawn red wood, metasequoia, which was described as a fossil in 1941. Forty million years ago, it was the commonest forest tree in Western North America, now it’s completely wiped out there, but it survives as about 6,000 individuals in China.
The western half of China in the interior of Asia consists of very tough deserts. In the harsh landscape of Tibet there exist a whole series of herbs, sedges, grasses, saussurea, primroses that are found only there. Some groups of plants, like sorseria for example, have their buds protected against the low temperatures, they keep on growing.
Another reason that there’re so many kinds of plants in China is that unlike the United States or Europe, there’s real tropical forest in the south tropical rain forests in southern Yunnan, and in that tropical forest, there are many species that come up from the south. They give the province of Yunnan about as many species, one state of China, and in fact about as many species as there are in the United States and Canada combined, about 15,000 kinds of plants. And it’s the melding of all of those regions, the survival of species from the past and the creation of many new species by the forces in evolution and the diverse topography of China that’s produced so much variety, so wonderfully pleasing and exciting to see.
China is doing the best that it can to save its biological diversity including its floral heritage. Chinese officials are very concerned with this, but it’s very difficult to meet the needs of 1.3 billion people to allow them to consume more, to give them things that they want like automobiles and other imports from the west and still to preserve the natural landscape or even the quality of the air, the water. They’re fighting that battle, a battle with which we are all familiar well, but they're going to have to do a great deal more in the future as we all are.
Notes:
rhododendron: Any of numerous usually evergreen ornamental shrubs of the genusRhododendron of the North Temperate Zone, having clusters of variously colored, often bell-shaped flowers.
azaleas rhododendron: Any of various shrubs of the genusRhododendron having showy, variously colored flowers.
forsythias: Any of several shrubs of the genusForsythia, native to Asia and widely cultivated for their early-blooming yellow flowers.
maidenhair tree : =gingko.
dove tree: The Dove tree (Davidia involucrata) is a medium-sized deciduous tree, usually placed in the tupelo family (Nyssaceae), but is sometimes included (with the tupelos) in the dogwood family (Cornaceae), and by yet others given family status of its own, as Davidiaceae. It is also known as the Handkerchief tree. The tree is native to central China, from Hubei to southern Gansu, south to Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan.
sedge: grass-like plant growing in marshes or near water.
saussurea: Saussurea is a genus of about 300 species of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, native to cool temperate and arctic regions of Asia, Europe, and North America, with the highest diversity in alpine habitats in the Himalaya and central Asia.
primrose: Any of numerous plants of the genusPrimula, having well-developed basal leaves and tubular, variously colored flowers grouped in umbels or heads with a funnel-shaped or salverlike corolla and a tube much longer than the calyx.
bract: A leaflike or scalelike plant part, usually small, sometimes showy or brightly colored, and located just below a flower, a flower stalk, or an inflorescence.
中國擁有的植物種類比世界上其他任何溫帶地區(qū)的國家都多。事實上，中國的植物種類是和他面積差不多大的美國的兩倍，是歐洲的三倍。植物種類是非常豐富多彩的財富，他們裝點了我們的花園，像杜鵑，連翹，給我們提供了種植作物，像大豆。
中國植物物種如此豐富的原因是植物在那里可以更好的生長。如果時光倒轉1500萬年，你可以在美國，歐洲和中國發(fā)現(xiàn)很多相同種類的植物和動物。他們生長在中國跨越暖溫帶和亞熱帶的森林里。
在中國的森林里我們可以找到銀杏和孔雀草，它們從17世紀開始就在歐洲和北美被種植。在那些森林里很神奇的一個遺跡就是名叫Davidia的鴿子樹。它被稱為鴿子樹是因為花簇上面擺動的花苞就像展翅欲飛的鴿子一樣。
另外一個例子是黎明紅木，水杉，在1941年的時候被稱為活化石。4000萬年前，水杉是北美西部最常見的樹種，現(xiàn)在幾乎已經(jīng)滅絕了，但是在中國卻又6千株。
中國的西部在亞洲的內(nèi)部，有著條件非常惡劣的沙漠。在西藏的原野上，生長著一系列的藥草，菅茅，雪蓮，櫻草，而這些植物只有在西藏才有。有一些植株，像sorseria，它們發(fā)芽來抵御低溫，一直都保持生長。
中國物種多的另一個原因是，和美國和歐洲不同，在南部的云南，中國有著真正的熱帶雨林。在那片熱帶雨林里，有非常非常多從南方來的物種。它給予中國這個南部的省份，云南，相當于美國和加拿大所有的物種，大約1.5萬種，是其他所有地區(qū)的總和。從過去存活下來的物種，在進化過程中新產(chǎn)生的物種和中國多種多樣的地質(zhì)特征共同催生了這么多的物種，令人應接不暇。
中國盡最大努力來保持生物的多樣性，包括它的植物遺產(chǎn)。中國政府對此非常關注。但是要滿足13億人的消費需求給他們所需要的機動車，從西方進口產(chǎn)品來保護自然環(huán)境和空氣，水的質(zhì)量仍然是非常困難的事情。他們在進行一場保護環(huán)境的戰(zhàn)爭，一場我們非常熟悉的戰(zhàn)爭。但是在將來，他們需要做的更多。