There is a plant world "Noah's Ark" under the Wutong Mountain in Shenzhen

In human clothing, food, and transportation, the shadow of plants is everywhere, and researchers in Shenzhen Xianhu Botanical Garden are exactly the messenger of communication between them. By exploring the secrets of the plant world, they preserve the diversity of plant genetic information, and promote the rare humanity of humans to rare Plant conservation and sustainable use. The Xianhu Botanical Garden has always regarded the planting and conservation of plants as an important task. It specializes in the "preservation center" that simulates different environments, regulate temperature, airflow, and light, etc., and simulate the natural survival conditions of wild plants. Rare plants such as stone butterflies, black warriors, and cliff ginger survive and reproduce in the "native realm". A few days ago, the deep night reporters came to the Xianhu Botanical Garden to visit the guardians behind the "Noah's Ark" in the plant world to see how these researchers unlock the "genetic passwords" of plants, so that rare and endangered plants can survive.

▲ On July 8th, scientific researchers at the Fairy Lake Botanical Park Scientific Research and Conservation Center to cultivate the growth of rare plants.

On July 8th, scientific researchers at the scientific and conservation center of Xianhu Botanical Garden conducted a moss scientific research experiment.

Go to Mian County, Shaanxi to find Qinling Stone Butterflies

At the foot of Wutong Mountain, Shenzhen's first peak, in the cold room of the Xianhu Botanical Park Conservation Center, there is a row of short plants that are unsightly. The green leaves are covered with short fluff. Moss plant Qinling stone butterfly. Dr. Qiu Zhijing, director of the Xianhu Botanical Garden Baoye Center and Zheng Senior Engineer, said that Qinling Stone Butterfly is a national second -level key protection wild plant. The record of the plant was first in 1981. The county discovered and named it.

▲ Qinling stone butterfly cultivated in the cold room of Xianhu Botanical Garden.

Qiu Zhijing was from Heze, Shandong. When he was a kid, he liked to play in the field. When he saw Huahua and grass, he wanted to know the name. During his doctoral student, he associated with the plants of the Kitzaee family. "The habitats of bitter moss plants are relatively special. They are mainly distributed in the karst landforms in limestone mountains. The number of populations is often relatively small, and there are many rare endangered plants. Watching Qinling Stone Butterflies at a close range, at the time, the danger of aftershocks searched in the mountains.

In 2008, Qiu Zhijing led a team to Mianxian, Shaanxi to conduct regional investigations to find Qinling stone butterflies. Because the early data records were blurred, the distribution of Qinling Stone butterflies was simply written "on the rocks, only 20 plants", it is not easy to find such short plants. "At that time, I was encountering the Wenchuan earthquake, and Shaanxi also had a sense of earthquake." According to previous experience, combined with the growth habits of the Qinling stone butterfly, the villagers were found to the villagers along the way. Qinling stone butterflies are collected to bring back research. Through artificial breeding technology, it has more in -depth research results in its biological characteristics and endangered mechanisms.

In 2015, at the invitation of the Shaanxi Provincial Forestry Department and Mianxian Forestry Bureau, Qiu Zhijing once again embarked on the way to find Qinling stone butterflies. Unfortunately, due to the construction of the highway, the stone wall of the Qinling Stone butterflies was razed to the ground. They had to search around the nearby mountains and find a small amount of plants on another mountain. The stone butterfly circles and protect it on the spot.

"Most of the plants in the moss family have beautiful flowers, and they are precious ornamental flowers to develop seed resources. At present, the research group of bitter moss research in Xianhu Botanical Garden has selected a number of excellent performance in various ways such as hybridization and domestication. Yin tolerance and bitter moss family, which has the characteristics of good negative negative, strong adaptability, long flowering period, and large flowers. It is currently being promoted and applied. "Qiu Zhijing hopes that the Qinling Stone butterflies that have been breeding will be moved back to the original land in the future. Local government cooperates with some regression research work, so that this species has continued in large quantities in the place of birth.

▲ The rare plant cultivated by the Scientific Research and Conservation Center of Xianhu Botanical Garden -Chang Rui Stone Butterfly.

Cultivate the fern plant that is more rare than the giant panda

Fern plants are the oldest terrestrial plants in China. In 2001, the discovery of a seemingly "inconspicuous" fern plant, Cantonese, made the Shenzhen Wild Plant Scientific Scientific Examination Team a sensation. "Yue Zihuo was discovered for the first time in Hong Kong in 1857, and was not officially published as a new species until 1906. At that time, reference to existing documents, it was found that the number of Yue Ziqi recorded was extremely scarce. Only more than 10 plants were found in the past two hundred years. It's rare than the giant panda. "Zhao Guohua, an engineer of Xianhu Botanical Garden, introduced a pot of Yue Zihu in the greenhouse.

▲ In the greenhouse of the Xianhu Botanical Garden, Zhao Guohua was introduced to a pot of Guangdong Ziyu.

The rhizomes of the Cantonese Ziru are short and thick, clustered with leaves, hard, ovate -length, and obvious leaves, especially the specialized spore leaves are covered with spore sac. "Fern plants have sexual reproduction through spores, but there are so many spores in Guangdong Ziru. Why is it difficult to see in the wild?" In order to explore the mechanism of scarcity of Guangdong Ziru, researchers in Xianhu Botanical Garden carried out the breeding biology of Guangdong Ziru. Studies have found that most of its spores are dominant and lost, and spores are the direct cause of sparse species. Researchers further explored and found that the Guangdong Ziru was a hybrid. The mother was the purple magpie of South China and the father was purple. Only in the same area of ​​the parents could be distributed by the hybrid.

Ziwuchi is a relatively primitive group of fern plants, which appears in the late Ershimo period. Because of many aspects of the characteristics of the thick sac fern and thin sac, it has a large number of fossil records, so It has important research value in the system evolution of ferns. At present, the technicians of Xianhu Botanical Garden have obtained a batch of Guangdong Ziru seedlings through many efforts to organize technology. Zhao Guohua said that each discovery is a new surprise. Only by constantly studying and carrying out conservation work can endangered plants "resurrected". Create "Noah's Ark" that protects plant diversity

The research and conservation of rare and endangered plants in Xianhu Botanical Garden, in addition to exchanging plants with other botanical gardens, also began to investigate and discover again and again. Among them, the process often traveled through thousands of mountains and rivers. "The scarce the trace, the more lustrous plants, the more likely to find rare species." Wang Hui, deputy director of Xianhu Botanical Garden and Zheng Senior Engineer, said that scientific researchers often go to remote field inspections in remote areas across the country. The environment is bad.

When entering the virgin forest inspection, they had encountered "attacks" such as "Rain Rain", but what made them more frustrated was artificial interference with vegetation. The construction of infrastructure such as highways and cement plants causes damage to the local landforms and vegetation. There are not a few examples like Qinling Stone butterflies. Round fruit moss is specially produced in Baisei, Guangxi, and was included in the endangered state of the "Red List of Endangered Species of the World Nature Conservation Alliance". According to Qiu Zhijing: "The condition of the round fruit is similar to the Qinling stone butterflies. The originally discovered distribution location was occupied by the roads, but it was not as lucky as the Qinling stone butterfly. It has not been discovered in recent years."

In order to save endangered plants facing the situation of human destruction, Xianhu Botanical Garden tried to reach cooperation with the infrastructure departments in many places. "The Karst landforms in Guangxi are relatively special, and vegetation has high scientific values. Once we went to Guangxi to find a lot of cement plants in the local area, and tried to cooperate with the cement plant operation company to conduct inspections and collection in the development area. Rare plants are brought back to the botanical garden for conservation. "Wang Hui said.

Even if it is difficult to collect, research and cultivate, researchers in Xianhu Botanical Garden have been in trouble for many years. The plant list is the most intuitive feedback of the conservation work results of the botanical garden. The latest baked "Fairy Lake Botanical Plant List of the Shenzhen Academy of Sciences" shows that the Xianhu Botanical Garden is now hiding 1,2204 classification groups in China 11 kinds of plants, 112 species of extremely crisis, 250 endangered, nearly dangerous 301 species, and 359 are prone to danger.

Shenzhen Evening News reporter Yidi Laohong intern Lai Jiarou

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