China's currently critically endangered plant - yangbiqi .com.
From the current situation, the maple is one of the most endangered species in the world, with only 5 plants left in the wild world.
< h2 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > unexpectedly discovered</h2>
Maple tree is a generic name for plants of the maple family, commonly known as maple trees. There are about 140 species of maple plants in the world, distributed in Asia, Europe, North America and the northern edge of Africa.
China is the country with the richest species of maple trees in the world, with 103 species, accounting for about 76% of all species. Many of the maple family are world-famous ornamental tree species, such as chicken claw maple, triangular maple, sugar maple and so on. The red pattern on the Flag of Canada is the leaf of the sugar maple. The maple tree has a beautiful shape and leaves, and its autumn leaves are unique among the many autumn leaf tree species in the world, and it is the most famous ornamental tree species for autumn leaves.
Since ancient times, China's literati and scholars have been very fond of the autumn leaves of maple trees, and there are many poems with maple trees as the theme. For example, Tang poems have Du Mu's "Stop and Sit in Love Maple Forest Late, Frost Leaves Red in February Flowers", Song Poems have Zhao Chengde's "The Mountain Color Is Not Old After Autumn, and the Lingfeng Fang is a Resident Child's Face".
Speaking of the discovery of the maple, it is purely accidental. In the process of studying the classification of maple trees, experts found a less complete specimen from Malutang, Yangpi County, Yunnan Province. The plant was named Gongshan Maple in 1959 by Mr. Fang Wenpei, the first maple expert in China.
However, after careful observation, they found that this specimen initially looked a bit like Gongshan maple, but the leaves of the specimen had 5 lobes, the back of the leaf had significant white hairs, the fruit was hairless, and the surface of the fruit had a significant bulge, which was easier to distinguish: the leaves of Gongshan maple usually had only 3 lobes, the back of the leaves was yellow-brown hair, the fruit had long hairs, and the nuts were ovoid, which was quite different from this specimen. In fact, this specimen is more like the Thunder Maple distributed in Sichuan, if it has a significant bulge and no hair, the lower surface of the leaf is grayish white: but it is also somewhat different from the Thunder Maple: the leaf is 5 split, the lower surface of the leaf has dense white hairs, and the geographical distribution is far apart.
Therefore, experts at the time tentatively deduced that it might be a new species. However, due to the incomplete fruit order of the specimen, to confirm this hypothesis, it is necessary to investigate the place of origin. So, the experts went to Yangpi County.
Malutang is the last small village located in the middle of Cangshan Mountain. Led by a guide from the village, the experts marched along the valley to the depths of cangshan mountain. By 4 p.m. that day, there was still no sign of this new species. So they decided to return to the village and continue to search the next day. Fortunately, they followed another road back to the village, only to find an isolated tree near the village, with 5 split and opposite leaves, much like the maple tree they were looking for. This large tree is at the end of its flowering stage, has grown young fruits, the fruit sequence is very long, it is indeed a new species that is closer to the Thunder Maple. Because this maple tree is unique to Yunnan Yangli, it was later named Yanglian maple.
<h2 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > not optimistic</h2>
After several investigations, the maple we have found is only distributed in the valley slopes near Malutang Village in Yangpi County, Yunnan Province, at an altitude of 2200 to 2400 meters, and there are only 5 plants. The current situation of these 5 maples is also extremely unoptimistic, their distribution is relatively isolated from each other, they can not carry out cross-pollination with each other, only two of them can flower and bear fruit, so there are few full seeds on the tree, and there are no seedlings nearby. In other words, the populations of these maple trees no longer have the ability to renew themselves, and if effective measures are not taken to expand the population, they can only be extinct.
The population of the endangered giant panda, which we are familiar with, is now more than 2,000, and compared with the two, the maple maple is a more endangered species than the giant panda. From the current situation, the maple is one of the most endangered species in the world, its threatened level is evaluated as "critically endangered" by the Red List of Chinese Species, it has been confirmed as one of the rarest and endangered species in the world, but it also has high scientific research value.
< h2 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > morphological characteristics</h2>
Maple is a deciduous tree that is 20 meters tall. The annual new branches are green, the biennial twigs are brownish green, and the perennial branches are light brown or dark brown with significant skin holes. Winter buds are ovoid, dark brown, and the buds are arranged in a tile-like arrangement. Leaf papery, 10 to 20 cm long and 11 to 25 cm wide, usually wider than long, 5 shallow lobes, heart-shaped at the base of the leaf, green hairless on the front, dense gray-white villi on the back, dense villi along the leaf veins: smaller at the base, tapering at the apex: larger lateral lobes and intermediate lobes, triangular ovate, tapering at the apex, full margin or inconspicuous comb teeth at the edges; 5 main veins, significantly raised on the back of the leaf: petiole length 4 to 17 cm, with gray-white soft hairs.
The inflorescence is glabrous, droopy, and emanating from the lateral buds of 2 to 3 years old branches. The flowers are yellow-green, calyx 5; petal 5, the disc is located inside the stamens, glabrous; stamens 8, peduncle 2, basal synapsym. The fruit is drooping, with 9 to 17 fruits, the young fruit is reddish-green, yellowish brown after ripening, the diameter of the nut is about 7 mm, there is a significant bulge; the wings and nuts are 4.7 to 5.5 cm long, and the wings are 1.4 to 1.7 cm wide, forming sharp angles or nearly right angles; the fruit stem is 2.7 to 3.4 cm long, glabrous. The flowering period is april, and the fruiting period is from September to October.
<h2 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > protect the maple</h2>
In 2018, the International Union for the Conservation of Botanical Gardens and the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly took conservation actions against the maple, on the one hand, in situ conservation, on the other hand, ex situ conservation, through grafting and seed propagation to increase and restore populations. The joint research team obtained the seeds of the maple maple through artificial assisted pollination, and carried out artificial breeding and ex situ conservation of the maple at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing), the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Cangshan Administration Bureau of Yangpi County. After the germination treatment experiment of the collected maple seeds, the seeds began to germinate.
With the joint efforts of experts, the dried seedlings of Yangtao maple have been successfully cultivated, which provides important support for the ex situ conservation of this species and the return of future species to nature to achieve artificial population restoration.