Xinjiang Morning News (text/ reporter Zhao Mei photo / interviewee himself provided) 18 years ago, 16-year-old Yang Zongzong became the first teenager in Xinjiang to receive the title of "Little Scientist of the Yangtze River" because he discovered a new record plant in China, the small flower bird nest orchid. Today, the 34-year-old Yang Zongzong's career seems to others to be off track, but he has never given up on his favorite flowers and plants.
Yang Zongzong is engaged in management in the gym, he gave his leisure to plant taxonomy research, the savings saved by the work, almost all used to buy botanical monographs, climb mountains and wading, collect different plant specimens everywhere, "each flower and plant, has its own story, I just want to read them, share their stories to more people, let people understand them." ”
Obsessed with plants since childhood, he was awarded the title of "Little Scientist" in junior high school
Recently, when the reporter came to the Madrid Spring Community in the new urban area of Urumqi City to interview Yang Zongzong, he was sorting out plant specimens at home. Yang Zongzong is quiet and introverted, not good at words, and likes to use a book or a plant specimen to tell reporters about his past.
Yang Zongzong's childhood is full of legends. When he was six or seven years old, he was very interested in the "Xinjiang Chinese Herbal Medicine Manual" purchased by his grandfather, and the black and white herbal patterns outlined a wonderful world in his eyes. Because he didn't read much, he often took his grandfather's hand when he went out, went to the woods, the mountains, and compared the drawings to find the actual herbs. When he got home, he filled the book with black and white patterns in the colors he saw.
In the third grade, after learning that Li Shizhen's "Compendium of Materia Medica" recorded a lot of knowledge of Chinese herbal medicine, he asked his mother to travel all over Wushi and Changji to buy the book. Later, after several turns, he finally entrusted someone to buy a set of "Compendium of Materia Medica" in Beijing. Because he likes to delve into books on Chinese herbal medicine, he often uses pocket money to go to the pharmacy to buy Chinese herbal medicine and go home to study, and at the age of 10, Yang Zongzong has learned to give people medicine and pulse.
One summer vacation, he volunteered to go to the big pharmacy on Xinmin Road in Wushi to help, the old Chinese medicine master found that he was proficient in pharmacological knowledge, tried to let him give a medicine to an old lady who bought medicine, the old lady took the Chinese medicine he caught suspiciously, did not expect that more than a week later, the old man ate the Chinese medicine he caught, the condition improved, and specially found a pharmacy to greatly appreciate him.
In his childhood, Yang Zongzong aspired to become a doctor when he grew up. However, when he entered junior high school and followed his biology teacher to collect plant specimens in the wild, he found that in fact, what he liked was not Chinese medicine, but the plant itself. Especially after reading a large number of books such as "Atlas of Higher Plants in China" and "Flora of Xinjiang", he found that plants also had their own "families" and many secrets that were not known.
Since then, he has been immersed in a sea of knowledge exploring the world of plants.
In July 1998, Yang Zongzong, as usual, went to Urumqi Houxia to collect plant specimens, and in the mountains at an altitude of more than 2,000 meters, he collected a strange plant with scattered distribution, "its flowers are small and dense, the sepals are oval-shaped, and the petals are spoon-shaped", he said, and went home to read various plant books, but did not find any documentary records of this plant.
By chance, he found that the Journal of Plants, to which he subscribed, contained an article reporting on the national rare and endemic plant, the diplodocus orchid, whose morphology was very similar to that of the unidentified specimen. In order to confirm the "identity" of this plant, in March 2000, he tried to write a letter to Chen Xinqi, a titan of domestic orchid research, and attached a specimen of this plant. A month later, Mr. Chen wrote back confirming that the plant, called "Little Flower Bird's Nest Orchid," was a newly recorded species in China.
"The small-flowered bird's nest orchid is a saprophytic orchid, which does not rely on photosynthesis, mainly supported by symbiosis of roots and fungi, and is a relatively primitive orchid, which has a very important systematic research value in orchids." Yang Zongzong said.
Because of this discovery, Yang Zongzong won the first prize of the national "Little Scientist of the Yangtze River" and the 50,000 yuan Li Ka Shing Foundation Scholarship that year, becoming the first teenager in Xinjiang to receive this honor.
It was also this honor that made Yang Zongzong firm in his belief in continuing plant research, and gradually clarified the direction of his research: research on plant classification.
The dream was once stranded, and the teacher woke up the dreamer with a word
Entering high school, Yang Zongzong's knowledge in the field of botany has improved by leaps and bounds, and in the second year of high school, he won the first place in the "National Secondary School Biology League", this honor allowed him to obtain the qualification of 8 universities, and he also entered a university in Beijing as he wished. However, for various reasons, he lost touch with his favorite discipline.
In a negative mood, he destroyed all the plant specimens he usually collected, and all the plant books he had bought and collected were sold. The dream of studying plants, temporarily stranded.
After graduating from college, Yang Zongzong learned to do business with his family, worked as a coach in a gym, and even went to a software development company to start as a staff member and enter the management with his own efforts... Over the years, he has carved out his own side of his career: In 2016, he and his friends began to run a health club cooperatively, and he also had some savings on hand.
However, in the middle of the night, when people were alone, they talked to themselves, about plants, about young dreams, but in Yang Zongzong's heart, they became a disaster. Once, when meeting with a middle school teacher who had not met for many years, the teacher asked him several questions related to plants, but Yang Zongzong did not answer them. He said: "At that time, my face immediately turned red, and I felt ashamed of the teacher's cultivation of me. "The disappointment in the teacher's eyes stung him." Don't give up on your hobbies easily! The teacher's words were loud, and the sleeping dream in Yang Zongzong's heart was awakened.
Since 2013, Yang Zongzong has begun to buy back the plant books he once sold from friends around him, spending tens of thousands of yuan to buy books from abroad to enrich his library, and at the same time, he began to plan the time for him to go out to collect plant specimens.
Committed to plant classification, preparing to build a herbarium
In the past two years, every spring, when the plants were first born, Yang Zongzong began to go out to collect plant specimens. In the winter, unable to go out to collect, he buried his head in making specimens. "Every night I came home from work at 10:30 p.m., started making plant specimens, researched while making them, and often went to bed until around 3 a.m."
Unlike in middle school, Yang Zongzong no longer stares at the collection of colorful plants, but is more interested in rare or difficult plants.
He said that the reason why he spends a lot of time and money to collect specimens in the field every spring and summer is because he found that some books lack physical specimens because they only refer to other materials, and he collected plant specimens and came back to compare the book records and found that some of the descriptions in the book did not match the actual specimens. "Therefore, the collection of plant specimens is very important, otherwise, some of the misinformation in books will continue to circulate."
In April this year, Yang Zongzong found a mother of sand shells known as the Desert Demon Ji in the desert.
Sand shellfish is a strange plant that grows in deserts and deserts, because Russian taxonomists still believe that it belongs to the genus Offidge (or sacshell mother), resulting in the taxonomic status of this plant has always been controversial.
In order to find out whether the sand shellfish belongs to the genus of shellfish, in April this year, Yang Zongzong and his friends drove nearly a thousand kilometers to the distribution area of this plant, they searched along the road in a desert for most of the day, and have not found any trace of this plant, the cold wind in the desert area in the spring is bone-chilling, just when everyone is ready to return, Yang Zongzong found it in a sand and gravel field with his intuition about the plant.
In July this year, in order to find a new domestic record species from 42 years ago, the Four Split Red Gate Orchid, Yang Zongzong and his party took great pains and turns.
They first drove more than a thousand kilometers to their destination, and under the guidance of a guide teacher, they crossed the dense forest, walked through the cold and bone-chilling rivers, and walked through a rugged mountain road before finally finding the distribution of this plant.
In July this year, Yang Zongzong found the Four-Split Red Gate Orchid in the mountainous area
"There is only one specimen of this orchid plant in China, collected in 1976, and no specimens have been found since then, and no specimens have been collected again." Yang Zongzong said that looking for it is also to provide richer and more informative physical materials for academic research, "It is a very characteristic species, at first glance, the inflorescence part is very similar to a man who is smiling badly, with a head, a face, and vivid facial features, which makes people can't help but look at it." He said that this orchid pattern originated in Europe, eastern Siberia and other places in Russia, and only has a small population distribution in Xinjiang, China, so it is very distinctive and has very important research value.
As a non-professional plant taxonomy enthusiast, in recent years, Yang Zongzong sometimes encountered doubts, but he did not have the idea of abandoning the original intention, "Since I like plant taxonomy research, I have a sense of responsibility for them, and the influence of tutors in the field of domestic plant research on me is also more firm in my dedication to plant research." He said that he will definitely stick to this persistence and do the things he likes to the extreme.
He said that in recent years, he is ready to take advantage of his young hard work and strive to accumulate a certain amount of financial resources to concentrate on plant research, "When I am old, I am ready to build a herbarium, share the specimens I collect to more people, or donate them to researchers who need it." ”
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