Glyptostrobus pensilis Staunton ex D. Don is a monospecific plant of the genus Pine in the family Cypressaceae. It comes from ancient times, once accompanied by the roars of dinosaurs, and has also witnessed the evolution of humans. The water pine has a rich fossil record, and there are many records in ancient documents, and it has the reputation of "the annual ring of the century". Nowadays, water pine is an endangered plant, how to protect them scientifically, so that this touch of green from ancient times will not leave us, is a problem that needs in-depth thinking and research.
Wild water pine community in Shanglou Village, Lingxia Township, Pingnan County, Ningde City, Fujian Province Photo by Wang Ruijiang
Biological properties of water pine
Pinus mizuta is a unisexual flowering plant that is monoecious. Adult trees only form female flowers for the first few years of flowering, and male flowers will continue to bloom on the same plant after a few years. Female flowers have a short flowering period, usually only two weeks per year, and after pollination with wind as a medium, they develop into cones of up to five or six seeds. Seed germination conditions are harsh and cannot germinate in wet or arid soils.
Pinus sylvestris likes light and is afraid of drought, does not tolerate shade, has a certain ability to resist salt, and is suitable for growing in neutral alluvial soil and swamp soil with large water content and good aeration. Pinus spp. has very strict requirements for habitat conditions, and is sensitive to changes in altitude, slope aspect, and slope position during the growth process. Pinus susceptible to pests and diseases, causing hollow trunks and cones to corrode, making natural regeneration difficult.
The trunk of the water pine tree is thick and straight, up to 30 meters high, the base is often expanded into a column groove, and there are knee-shaped breathing roots that extend out of the soil surface or water surface, the branches and leaves are dense and compact, the root system is developed, the main root can stretch into the soil layer 5~7 meters, the shape is beautiful, it is a good garden ornamental tree species, and it is also an excellent windproof berm tree species.
Shui Song, Nanfeng Town, Fengkai County, Guangdong Province Photo/Li Xiaojun
Pinus terris is mainly distributed in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong Province, the central part of Fujian Province and the lower reaches of the Minjiang River, the northeastern part of Jiangxi Province and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and only a few trees exist in Guangxi, Hunan and Yunnan. In addition, there are introduced and cultivated in Anhui, Shandong, Henan, Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Yunnan, Taiwan, Japan and the United States. Previously, it was generally believed that Pinus water was endemic to the mainland, but in recent years wild populations have also been found in Vietnam and Laos. Yongfu Town, Zhangping County, Longyan City, Fujian Province, grows a "world's largest water pine". With a height of 21 meters, a diameter at breast height of about 2.7 meters and an age of about 2,110 years, this pine is one of the top ten ancient trees in Fujian Province and the oldest and tallest individual in mainland China.
Shui Songwang of Lizhuang Village, Yongfu Town, Zhangping County, Longyan City, Fujian Province Photography / Wang Ruijiang
Mizumatsu from history
Pinus spp. flourished in the Northern Hemisphere from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene period, and the earliest fossils of Pinus spp. were collected from Cretaceous strata in Western Canada and Greenland. At present, there are more than 30 species of fossil plants of Pinus spp. On July 31, 1980, Nanfang Daily reported that in many villages and towns in Guangdong's Pearl River Delta, especially in the Sihui region, there were large numbers of ancient pine trees buried under ponds or swamps. Most of these ancient trees have a DBH of more than 2 meters, and are called "underground forests" and "kingdoms of water pines" by scientific researchers. According to the media at the time, in this "30,000-year-old ancient forest under the sea sand", there are thousands of ancient water pines that maintain their original appearance, and the scene is spectacular and shocking. Later, a similar spectacular sight was discovered near Zhaoqing. Some experts believe that the formation of large areas of subterranean forests of Pinus water should be related to sudden changes in the local climate. It can be said that these ancient pine trees have witnessed the process of environmental and climate changes over the past tens of thousands of years, and have hidden scientific codes that reveal the vicissitudes of nature, and have important scientific value for the study of paleobotany, paleoclimatology, archaeology and anthropology.
Pinus is not only an important material for the study of the history of the earth, but also an important material for the study of the history of botany and the history of human science and technology. According to historical records, water pine was once widely distributed in southern China. For example, in 304 A.D., Ji Han of the Jin Dynasty had a record in the "Southern Grass and Trees" that "the water pine leaves are slender like cypress, the South China Sea is native, and the fragrance is not very fragrant". In the 60s of the 17th century, Qu Dajun also mentioned in the twenty-fifth volume of "Guangdong New Language" "Wood Language" that "the water pine is like to be born next to the water, and its stem is also six out of ten, and its branches and leaves are four out of ten...... The leaves are sweet and edible, and the seeds are very fragrant...... When wet, it is as easy as peeling melons...... Guangzhong where the flat embankment curved bank, are planted to see the beauty", and endowed with poems and clouds "Nong is like holding incense branches, not leaving the water pine tree; cut for the clogs light, with the Lang stepping on the frost dew". In 1797, George Staunton, a British diplomat in the Qing Dynasty, described the pine under the scientific name "Thuya pensilis" in the "Record of the British Envoy's Meeting with Qianlong". Because the name did not conform to botanical naming conventions, David Don qualified to publish it in 1824. Interestingly, Staunton recorded that the location of the pine was found in Jiangnan Province at the time, but the specimen of the pine type now preserved in the Natural History Museum of the United Kingdom has the words "China: province of Guangton" written on it.
Ancient Tree of Water Pine in Taocheng Town, Yongchun County, Quanzhou City, Fujian Province Photography / Wang Ruijiang
The earliest scientific researcher in mainland China to conduct scientific research on water pine was Chen Lusi, a graduate student who graduated from National Sun Yat-sen University in 1938, and she studied under Mr. Chen Huanyong, a famous botanist in mainland China, with the title of her graduation thesis "Research on Water Pine". In addition, in 1956, Mr. Hou Kuanzhao edited and published the Flora of Guangzhou, describing the distribution of water pine: "The fields, ponds and Xiaochong along the Pearl River in the suburbs of Guangzhou can be seen from time to time". This indicates that before the fifties and sixties of the 20th century, Pinus spp. was still a common species in the southern part of the mainland, especially in the Pearl River Delta.
Endangered plants that need to be protected urgently
Although it has survived tenaciously since hundreds of millions of years ago and witnessed the rise and fall of the biological world, it is now an endangered plant. In addition, the population distribution and the number of individuals in mainland China have decreased sharply in the past 50 years.
According to the census data of ancient and famous trees in Fujian and Jiangxi and the field survey data of the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (as of 2019), there are currently less than 300 ancient pine trees more than 100 years old in China, and they are still showing a downward trend year by year. In addition, as early as 1991, the Red Book of Chinese Plants listed Pinus micaratus as an endangered species (EN), in 1999 and 2021, it was listed as a Class I key protected plant in the List of National Key Protected Wild Plants, and in 2004, it was listed as a vulnerable species (VU) in the Red List of Chinese Species. In May 2012, the State Forestry Administration (now the National Forestry and Grassland Administration) issued the "National Plan for the Protection of Wild Plants with Very Small Populations (2011-2015)", which listed Pinus spp. as a very small population. It is also assessed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List, indicating that the world is facing a significant threat to its survival and is at increasing risk of extinction in the wild. Some researchers predict that wild populations of Pinus terrhamidea could become extinct within the next 100 years. The reasons for its endangerment are not only its own reasons, but also environmental reasons, and more man-made reasons.
From the perspective of its own reasons, the population of Pinus sylvestris cannot be regenerated normally due to its long life cycle, poor competitiveness, narrow distribution range, poor natural regeneration ability of the population, and extremely strict requirements for habitat conditions. At present, most of the P. micarpus populations in mainland China have shown an inverted pyramidal age structure with too many old trees, a small number of middle-aged trees, and a serious shortage of seedlings, and the population stability is seriously threatened. In addition, due to the age of the water pine trees, in the hot and rainy climate conditions in the southern region, pests and diseases cause many ancient trees to have hollow trunks. When these trees fall, the genetic resources they hold disappear forever, and this happens almost every year. What is more alarming is that the survey found that most of the ovules of Pinus spp. are stunted under natural conditions, and a large number of well-developed seeds cannot be formed, which in turn reduces the conversion rate of seeds-seedlings-adult trees, which seriously affects the expansion of the population size of P. sylvestris.
Water pine with a hollow trunk
From the perspective of environmental reasons, Pinus micarata is greatly affected by alien species. Faced with a large number of invasions and entanglements of exotic plants such as Mikania, many water pine plants died. In addition, the invasion of alien species has also caused the fragmentation and patching of the habitat of the Pinus spp. population, which has led to the difficulty of spreading and migrating the population of P. sylvestris, and also hindered the exchange of genes, resulting in the increase of inbreeding rate and the rapid decline of genetic diversity, which in turn pushed it to the brink of extinction.
The human factor should not be underestimated. Pinus spp. is mostly found in wet environments such as river banks, ponds, lakes or swamps in the Pearl River Delta and the middle and lower reaches of the Minjiang River. These areas are also densely populated, with rapid economic development and rapid urbanization. As a result, in recent decades, the habitat and surrounding environment of Pinus terrarifolia have inevitably been overly disturbed by human activities.
Process the cork with water foil
Special operation to protect the water pines
It is the responsibility and obligation of our generation to strengthen the rescue and protection of water pine resources as soon as possible, so that the "water pine" that once carried the memories of many people can still become a plant that people "remember and live in nostalgia" after a few years to decades.
In order to arouse the public's awareness of the protection of rare and endangered plants, on March 12, 2006, the mainland post office issued a set of special stamps with the theme of relict plants, one of which is the water pine. The image on the pine stamps and commemorative covers comes from the largest natural pine forest in mainland China, which grows in Pingnan County, Fujian Province.
Ex-situ conservation of water pine in Shimen National Forest Park, Conghua District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province
At present, with the support of Botanic Gardens Conservation International, the Guangdong Forestry Bureau, and the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Landscape Architecture and Forestry, the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been conducting field investigation and conservation work on Pinus misatum since 2017. On the basis of the analysis of the genetic diversity of P. sylvestris populations in China, the populations with high genetic diversity distributed in Guangdong Province were preferentially selected for seedling cultivation, and seedling breeding experiments were carried out. After the failure of seedling cultivation caused by Typhoon Mangkhut in 2018 and the poor growth of seedlings due to drought in 2019, nearly 3,000 P. sylvestris seedlings have finally been cultivated, and more than 2,000 seedlings have been re-entered into the field, which has accumulated important experience for the future ex-situ conservation of P. sylvestris.
Water pine seedlings
The first record of the water pine on the mainland began in the Jin Dynasty, and it has been more than 1,700 years to this day, and the "century rings" of the water pine record the development and rise and fall of the Chinese land. Under the guidance of the construction of ecological civilization in the new era, people will not forget the vicissitudes of the water pine, a "living fossil of plants", and turn it into an "underground forest". It may no longer become the protagonist of the wetland forest, but as a witness of historical development, it will also deeply engrave the biodiversity conservation action in the new era into its annual ring!
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