Today's protagonist is called gǒng tóng.
It is a national key protected wild plant, a single genus unique to China, a relict plant, and a world-famous ornamental plant.
It is a relict plant left over from the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era 10 million years ago.
During the Quaternary Ice Age, most of the regions became extinct, and only some areas in southern China survived, becoming the "living fossil" of the plant kingdom today, known as the "Chinese pigeon tree", also known as the "pigeon flower tree" and "water pear".
Wild species only grow in and around southwestern Sichuan and central Hubei provinces in China. Coincidentally, the Xigou Nature Reserve under Huanglong has a lot of tung trees.
Every May, the wild tung flowers in Xigou will bloom vigorously, like a group of "white pigeons" perched on the branches, the scene is romantic and poetic. The windward blooming of the tung flowers is intoxicating.
Driving into Xigou and looking up, within an 8-kilometer radius, there are only "white pigeons" standing, "looking" at the people under the trees in the branches. Looking closer, it turned out to be a tung flower.
The male and a hermaphroditic flower form an apical head-shaped inflorescence, resembling the head of a pigeon with "eyes" and "mouth". At the base of the inflorescence, there are two large, white buds that resemble the wings of a white pigeon, and the green-yellow stigma resembles the beak of a pigeon.
In addition to the tung tree, the Yellow Dragon also has a wealth of natural treasures.
The vegetation coverage rate of scenic spots is as high as 88.9%, and the forest coverage rate is as high as 65.8%. As a nature reserve, there are 84 families of plants, 1300 species, and mixed northern and southern plant species, presenting a unique vegetation landscape.
From the bottom of Huanglonggou to the top of the mountain, it is simply a complete alpine forest belt specimen map, which not only has a high ornamental value, but also has a unique scientific value.
For example, the nationally protected plants even incense trees, water green trees, Sichuan sequoias, hemlocks, yew trees, as well as Chinese endemic or huanglong plants such as snow lotus, wheat hanging spruce, Minjiang fir, dense branch cypress, pine pan cypress and other rare plants, can be seen here.
Therefore, the protection and research of vegetation resources has always been an important scientific research project of Huanglong, and scientists come here every year to carry out their own research projects. It can be said that the Yellow Dragon Forest is both beautiful and talented.
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