Jin Xiaohua: Speak up for plants that can't speak丨Don't be confused 2024

Jin Xiaohua (Nongjian/Photo)

Compared with animals, plants are rarely associated with hot searches.

In May 2022, in the primeval forest of Metuo, Tibet, a "tallest tree in Chinese mainland" equivalent to a 27-story building topped the Weibo hot search list.

Compared with the tall and conspicuous "tree king", the low flowers and plants attract less attention. Also in May 2022, the Tibetan orchid investigation team led by Jin Xiaohua also investigated in Motuo and discovered an unknown species of the genus Phalaenopsis in the family Orchidaceae along the banks of the Brahmaputra River.

Plants tend to be silent and fragile.

From a doctor of botany to a researcher at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a member of the National Scientific Committee on Endangered Species, Jin Xiaohua has studied orchids for more than 20 years.

In the early 2000s, when he was studying for his Ph.D., he witnessed orchids such as Dendrobium, Huaxi Xiaohongmen, and Hanlan being transported and sold in baskets. In June 2020, Southern Weekly published a report that the chaos of poaching orchids and other wild plants had been transferred to online platforms, and the reason behind it was the neglect of plant protection and the fact that the List of Wild Plants under National Key Protection (hereinafter referred to as the "List") had not been updated for 21 years, resulting in difficulties in law enforcement (see "Live E-commerce Wantonly Goes Online, Endangered Plants Secretly Harvested Down the Mountain").

After the report was published, various Internet platforms removed videos and products such as "Xiashan Orchid", and the Cyberspace Administration of China focused on rectifying the online sale of cherished and endangered wild plants.

In September 2021, the revised version of the List was officially released. Orchidaceae is the most included, with about 300 species, accounting for 1/3 of the list. As one of the participants in the adjustment of the list, Jin Xiaohua has been interviewed by Southern Weekly several times to speak out for plants that cannot speak.

"I have too many moments when I am puzzled in scientific research, but when I think of more and more new species being discovered, and most of the plants in urgent need of protection are included in the "List" for protection, I feel very happy, and I can be regarded as contributing a little bit of my own strength. Jin Xiaohua told a reporter from Southern Weekend.

They wait for humans to approach step by step with their feet

Phalaenopsis orchids with mature breeding techniques and long flowering periods have been loved by young people, and the phalaenopsis found by Jin Xiaohua in Motuo is very special, with creamy yellow flowers and a pair of triangular wings. Jin Xiaohua named it "Motuo Phalaenopsis".

The orchid family is one of the largest families of angiosperms, with about 30,000 species, and about 2,000 species have been recorded on the mainland. Because of its ornamental, medicinal value and unique habitat, it is considered to be "beautiful and fragile".

Up to now, Jin Xiaohua and his collaborators have published 1 new family, 2 new genera, and more than 70 new species of orchids.

Born in the countryside, Jin Xiaohua is naturally close to plants, playing in the mountains and wilderness, and encountering orchids from time to time.

In 1998, Jin Xiaohua reported to the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences as a master's student to conduct botanical research, and his first paper was to study a new species of Dendrobium orchidaceae.

"My mentor, Mr. Ji Zhanhe, wanted to hone my writing skills, I had never written such a paper at that time, and his revisions were often longer than my essays. Jin Xiaohua recalled. Ji Zhanhe is a famous orchid botanist in China, who worked at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences after graduating from the Department of Biology of Sun Yat-sen University in 1963 and died in 2001.

China has a vast territory, with forests, shrubs, meadows, grasslands, deserts, wetlands and other ecosystems, and more than 40,000 species of wild higher plants (higher plants include mosses, ferns, stone pines, seed plants, etc., most of which have roots, stems and leaves), ranking third in the world. Yunnan Province alone has about 20,000 species of higher plants, which is equivalent to the number of species in the whole of Europe.

In the academic training of writing papers, Jin Xiaohua's research improved rapidly. While working on the desk, he also looked back on the 100-year history of botanical research in China.

Nearly 100 years ago, foreign "plant hunters" went to China to collect plant specimens and publish papers. At that time, there was still zero local research on botany in China, and most of the Chinese botanists in the early years had a background of studying abroad, and they started from the most basic plant classification, identification, and naming.

It wasn't until the fifties and sixties of the 20th century that more and more native plants began to have names and stories. In the seventies and eighties, with the economic development and scientific and technological progress, the distribution pattern and affinity of plants gradually became clear, and the Chinese "family tree" of the plant kingdom became more complete.

Around 2001, Jin Xiaohua began to carry out field investigations. Wild animals can rely on infrared cameras and drones to capture traces, but wild plants cannot speak or move, they wait for humans to approach step by step with their feet.

Road construction extends into inaccessible biodiversity hotspots.

For example, because of the large altitude difference, the secret land of Tibet, Metuo, covers almost all vegetation types from south to north, and is a "natural vegetation museum" that condenses from the tropics to the cold zone. Easily accessible, this eastern Himalayan region is a Garden of Eden for contemporary "plant hunters" to discover new species.

The record of "Tree King" on the hot search only lasted for 9 days. An 83.2-metre Yunnan huangguo fir tree quickly set a new record of 76.8 metres for a Bhutanese pine, and a year later, a 102-metre taller Tibetan cypress was found in Bomi, a neighbor county of Metuo.

The quest to write books about wild plants is full of surprises, dangers, joys and sorrows.

In November 2021, four geological surveyors died in the field of Ailao Mountain in Yunnan Province due to cardiogenic shock caused by low temperatures. This news evoked Jin Xiaohua's memories. Straddling the tropics and subtropics, this nearly 1,000-kilometre mountain range serves as a "corridor" for north-south animal migration and a "gene pool" for many species, where a fellow forester once fell off a cliff while collecting plant specimens.

After the protection list was updated, "upgrading and fighting monsters" began again

China's botanical research has lasted for 100 years, and the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where Jin Xiaohua works, has been established for 95 years. China also plays an important role in biodiversity conservation on the international stage.

In 2021, Kunming hosted the first part of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), and in the second part of the meeting in 2022, the parties agreed on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to protect 30% of the Earth's land, sea, inland waters and coastal areas by 2030.

However, the popularization of plant knowledge is still insufficient.

In 2020, a reality show team used the plant "Snow Rabbit" as a prop in the Snow Mountain, and the program team apologized, saying that there was no actual act of picking rare plants, "but after the program was broadcast, it had a certain negative impact and did not play a role in publicizing the protection regulations of rare plants." On social media, bouquets of wildflowers picked by tourists often contain endangered plants, but are thrown away after taking photos.

Biodiversity conservation is often carried out through inventories. For example, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species marks the status of conservation of plant and animal species around the world, while the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) controls the trade of species of different endangered levels through the list.

In the second year of Jin Xiaohua's graduate studies, China released the first batch of "List of Wild Plants under National Key Protection", and like the "giant panda" and other protected animals, Jin Xiaohua's beloved plants have since been protected.

However, the first list is not complete, and then there is a "second batch (discussion draft)", which contains thousands of species such as orchids, which has not been officially released.

As a result of many appeals, the revision of the list was launched about 10 years ago, led by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. Jin Xiaohua joined in 2019 to coordinate expert opinions and provide scientific research support, "at that time, it was already a period of rapid progress [of the new list], and sometimes experts flew in early morning for meetings."

There are many controversies about whether species are included or not, whether the protection level is level 1 or 2, involving many administrative departments, and there are still many opinions from all walks of life after the release of the draft for comments. Jin Xiaohua was able to observe the progress of plant protection in China from the perspective of scientific research and non-scientific research.

After the official update of the list, it is a new beginning of "upgrading and fighting monsters".

In 2023, with the joint efforts of many experts across the country, "National Key Protected Wild Plants" will be published, with text descriptions accompanied by color pictures or line drawings, so that more people can know about these colorful species.

The construction of nature reserves, national parks, and national botanical gardens, the improvement of laws and regulations and law enforcement teams, and the updating of the list of key wild protected plants are all "golden bell jars and iron cloth shirts" of plants. However, there are still many unknowns to be solved in the scientific research projects undertaken by Jin Xiaohua: what are the threats to the plants on the protection list, what are the threat mechanisms, what factors can be intervened by humans, and what factors are powerless for humans to do?

Jin Xiaohua observed that local residents have more livelihood options and a more decent income, so they do not have to risk their lives to dig wild and rare plants in the cliffs of the valley. "At present, there are still very few people who can only make a living by digging wild plants. At the same time, more and more people in society agree that "don't pick wildflowers on the roadside", which also relieves law enforcement officers who fight the trade in endangered wild plants.

"In general, plant protection is very difficult, and it is very difficult to enforce the law when it is so widely distributed. Jin Xiaohua said that China is still the largest developing country, and the construction of roads, hydropower stations, or industrial production that requires a certain plant as a raw material is likely to threaten the survival of some wild populations.

Some factors are irresistible. On December 21, 2023, when he was interviewed by a reporter from Southern Weekly, Jin Xiaohua was conducting a field investigation in Indonesia. Indonesian botanists complained to him that for some reason, Indonesia's dry season was particularly long this year, and many orchids died of drought, and it was supposed to be the rainy season.

Southern Weekly reporter Huang Sizhuo

Editor-in-charge: Wang Tao