Leaves of various shapes
Bark coats and coats
On June 16th, after several months of meticulous production, the fourth renovation of "Plant World" will be officially opened to the Beijing Museum of Natural History, let us have a sneak peek.
As one of the four classic permanent exhibitions that the Beijing Museum of Natural History has retained since its establishment in 1958, the updated "Plant World" exhibition is located on the north side of the second floor of the exhibition building of the Beijing Museum of Natural History, with an exhibition area of more than 850 square meters, exhibiting more than 1,200 fossils and living plant specimens, and the three exhibition halls are divided into three parts: "Plant Evolution", "Prosperity and Adaptation of Angiosperms" and "Plants and Humans".
The Department of Plant Evolution introduced cyanobacteria, endosymbiosis, algae, nudibranchs, wedges, euthanthenophytes, euthenophytes, exogonitos, seed ferns, cycads, ginkgo bilobas, conifers, hemp vines, and angiosperms on a chronological axis, starting from the birth of the earth. The exhibition line curves and travels, like a time and space tunnel of plant evolution, and all kinds of fossil and living plant specimens are hung on the exhibition wall and placed in the exhibition cabinet, which seems to be telling the stories in the journey of plant evolution.
More than 4 meters tall sea turtle, one meter high wakame and two kelp specimens more than two meters long are displayed in the algae exhibition area. These large seaweed specimens, collected by the Beijing Museum of Natural History during the production of the first "Plant World" exhibition in the last century, are still a major attraction of this exhibition, although somewhat worn.
In the middle of the exhibition hall, the Carboniferous swamp forest dating from about 350 million to 290 million years ago has been restored, and the extinct plants such as scales, seals, and reeds have been scientifically restored to life in the forest. These plants flourished exceptionally during that period, and after their death, they were buried in swamps for a long time, carbonizing into coal, so the Carboniferous period was also an important coal-forming period in geological history.
More than a meter high fibrous cycad plant fossils hang in the middle of the cycad display cabinet, the fossils are very beautifully preserved, stretched pinnate leaves from the middle stem spiral radiation branching out, the middle of the stem preserved the reproductive structure. In addition, there are other kinds of cycad plant fossils and modern cycad plant specimens in the display cabinet, which together interpret the evolutionary process of the origin, prosperity and decline of cycads.
The L-shaped fossil display cabinet with a length of more than 10 meters and a height of 3 meters is a highlight of the angiosperm exhibition area, with a total of more than 100 fossils of Cretaceous and Neogene angiosperms, including the early angiosperm Liaoning ancient fruit and Chinese ancient fruit plant fossils, the novice maple tree leaf fossils with palm-like splits in the Neogene period, the fossils of hickory plants with compound leaves, and the fossils of sycamore plants with larger leaves. These plant fossils are hung on the back panel of the display cabinet in different categories, telling the history of the origin and evolution of angiosperms.
The Exhibition Hall of Prosperity and Adaptation of Angiosperms is divided into two parts, the first part of which deals with the flourishing angiosperms, showing three units: leaves of different shapes, colorful flowers and strange fruits/seeds.
In the first exhibition area, the leaf specimens of 127 species of plants were gathered together, including the round leaves of the dry lotus, the arrow-shaped leaves of the unicorn, the lanceolate leaves of the pod, the oval leaves of the lilac, the palm-shaped compound leaves of the horse chestnut tree, the odd pinnate compound leaves of the salt-skinned wood, etc., which competed to show the variety of leaves of angiosperms. Fruit/seed specimens of more than 180 species of angiosperms are displayed in 5-meter-long and 2-meter-high display cases, such as the giant pods of the cane vine, the long dachshund-like pods of the dachshund tree, the candida-shaped pods of locust, the single winged fruit of eucommia, the stone fruit of the short-spiked fishtail, the nuts of chestnuts, the urns of the melon, the elephant trunk palm fruit sequence of about 3 meters long, and so on. These specimens of various shapes are either sealed in square circular transparent boxes, hung on the wall, or flattened in the exhibition niches, focusing on the strange appearance of various angiosperm fruits/seeds.
The second part describes the various types of angiosperms that are suitable for their living environment, and selects plants from 6 types of vegetation, including tropical rainforest plants, mangrove plants, desert plants, alpine plants, carnivorous plants and parasitic plants. The stems of the strangled figs with a height of about 3 meters and a diameter of more than 1 meter and the plank-like roots of plants more than one meter high are displayed in the exhibition area of tropical rainforest plants; specimens of highland cushion-like plants such as sac grasses, moss-like mosses and cushion-shaped snow reishi mushrooms are displayed in the alpine plant exhibition area; specimens such as pitchergrass, thatched vegetables and fine-leaved tanuki algae are displayed in the exhibition area of carnivorous plants, which use their unique morphological characteristics to describe their special ability to adapt to their living environment.
The Plant and Human Exhibition Hall is divided into two parts, the outer wall is the first part, displaying plant content related to people's material civilization, including edible plants, medicinal plants, oil plants, fiber plants, spice plants, dye plants and other plants of important economic value in a total of seven units.
In the edible plant exhibition area, a large number of seed specimens of rice, sorghum, wheat, corn and soybeans are encapsulated in exquisite acrylic round boxes, neatly arranged on the back panel of each niche, and the "burst-grain" varieties of corn, although they are not good-looking, are the best raw materials for the production of popcorn, which are crop varieties cultivated by scientists and indispensable grains in each of our daily lives.
Plants are also inexhaustible medicinal treasures, and the soaked specimens and raw medicinal specimens of various medicinal plants are displayed in the medicinal plant exhibition area. You can see the soaked specimen of the Artemisia annua plant, from which Chinese scientist Tu Youyou and her team took artemisinin from this plant in the 1970s, saving the lives of millions of malaria patients and winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015. Liuwei Dihuang Pills and Loquat Cough Syrup are well-known and commonly used medicines, and their main formulas are cooked ground yellow, dogwood, yam, Ze diarrhea, danpi and loquat leaves, Baibu, mulberry white peel, platycodon, white front and poppy husk. Specimens of these medicinal herbs are also displayed in this exhibition area.
Bark coats and coats are displayed in the fiber plant exhibition area. Bark clothing is a very old clothing, known as "clothing living fossil", bark clothing exhibits are made of arrow poison wood phloem fibers as raw materials, through the beating and washing and other technologies processing and production. It is made from the leaf sheath fibers of palm plants, which was once an essential rainproof tool for farmers in southern China.
The central area of the exhibition hall is the second part of the exhibition hall, and the national flowers of more than 50 countries are displayed on the curved display board in the upper part of the central area, like a gallery in the air. The curved display case on the lower side of the central area exhibits the Buddhist Heart Sutra, the Ping An Sutra, the Village Rules and Regulations, the Dai Proverbs, the Dai Calendar, and other physical objects of the Baye Sutra of the Dai people in the Xishuangbanna area of Yunnan Province, China. Bayeux is a carrier of writing, which is carved with an iron pen on the leaves of a specially treated bay leaf palm plant. In addition to recording Buddhist classics, the Dai Baye Sutra also includes astronomical calendars, social history, philosophy, law, medicine, science and technology, etc., and is an "encyclopedia" and valuable wealth of Dai culture.