Undersea coral courtesy of Li Heng
Article\Hainan Weekly Special Contributor Lu Ming
Coral small business card
Coral is one of the world's four major organic gemstones, the English name is coral, from the Latin corrallium, growing in the ocean, like a tree like grass and like a flower, take out a bouquet of natural art that is graceful and beautiful.
Coral has long been considered a marine plant. It was not until the 1920s that scientists discovered that corals were actually calcium carbonate (calcite structure) bones secreted by low-level marine animal polyps, or shells and coral bodies. Polyps prey on small plankton in the ocean, absorb calcium and carbon dioxide from the seawater, and then secrete calcium carbonate (limestone) and become their own shell. The countless small holes in these shells (bones) are the "home" for the polyps to settle down. Countless polyps gather together to grow, sucking calcium carbonate from seawater to form their common "home" and fixing them on the seabed, which is coral.
Coral is one of the world's four major organic gemstones, is a thousand years of life in the ocean, it is like a tree like grass and like a flower, bright and beautiful, crystal clear, warm and shiny, take out a bunch of natural artwork that is graceful and beautiful.
Corals are a large family of sea worlds with many kinds. Corals grow extremely slowly and under extremely harsh conditions, making them an important non-renewable marine living resource.
China's South China Sea and Taiwan waters are important growth areas for gem-grade red corals, accounting for about 80% of the world's reserves. In 1962, China listed red coral as a national level I protected wild animal. From January 1, 2017, our province completely stopped processing and selling coral reefs and their products.
White coral bonsai of the Qing Dynasty (collection of the Palace Museum)
The beautiful legend of coral
Although there are many types of corals, the first people to recognize and regard as gemstones are red corals. Since ancient times, countries around the world have regarded red coral as a treasure, and both ancient ancestors and the people of today have a unique preference for red coral.
The human use of red coral dates back to ancient Roman times. The ancient Romans believed that red coral has the functions of disaster prevention and avoidance, enlightenment wisdom, hemostasis and heat, etc., and regarded it as a rich and auspicious thing and "red gold", and it is still popular in Italy to use coral as a talisman to avoid evil.
Ancient Indians have documented the wearing of red coral ornaments in the fifth century BC. The ancient Indians believed that "coral is the mother of the earth", and they held the red coral as a god, and the red coral was also an indispensable artifact in the sacrifice activities.
Some maritime explorers in the West believe that wearing red coral can protect against lightning and hurricanes, and can bless the journey with calm wind and waves, peace and smoothness, which gives red coral a mysterious color.
Red coral culture also has a long history in China. Long ago, Chinese used red coral as a symbol of wealth, power and happiness. The homes of the emperors and rich people are mostly decorated with corals as decorations. Ban Gu's "Affairs of Emperor Wu of Han" records that "Emperor Wu raised the vestibule of the shrine, planted jade trees, and used the coral as branches." "That is, the shrine is made of jade as the stem and coral as the branch to make bonsai for the shrine." Cao Zhi of the Three Kingdoms once wrote a poem "Beauty": "The pearl is crossed with jade body, and the coral is difficult; Luo Yi He fluttered, lightly dressed with the wind. "Coral is compared to pearls, jade bodies, and wooden difficulties (a kind of turquoise beads), and it is used to foil the graceful posture and clean skin of beautiful women."
During the Tang Dynasty, corals were sought after by dignitaries and talents. The Tang Dynasty poet Xue Feng once gave a poem: "The guests compete to recite the poems, and the beauties are drunk and give coral noodles." "It can be seen that coral ornaments in the Tang Dynasty were prevalent.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the development of navigation technology, the source of corals was more convenient and the use of corals was more extensive. Many of the ornaments of wealthy families, ranging from residences, boats, cars, and furniture, to rings, bracelets, ruyi, bracelets, etc., are decorated with coral or made of coral. The emperor of the Qing Dynasty had to wear coral beads during the sacrifice, and the emperor's costume belt was also inlaid with red coral. The beads worn by the concubines and Mrs. Baylor and Mrs. Fuguo are made of coral. The ornaments of the imperial relatives and relatives are even less coral, and the necklaces and beads worn by the erpin officials are made of red coral.
Red coral has always been regarded as a mascot for talisman blessings among some ethnic minorities in China, especially among mongolians, Tibetans and other nomadic people. Tibetan lamas and monks also hold rosaries made of red coral.
Today, Westerners still refer to coral with pearls, amber, and bricks as the four major organic gemstones, and are one of the "March birth stones" in the West.
A gorgeous family of corals
Corals are a large family of the marine world, belonging to the class of coelenterate phylum polyps. Polyps are the largest class of coelenterates, with about 7,000 species, of which there are nearly 500 species in China, the vast majority of which are in the waters of the South China Sea. Coral family members can be divided into several species according to their different traits, characteristics and composition.
According to the characteristics of the soft body, such as the number and arrangement of tentacles and diaphragms, people divide corals into three categories: tetrafluorinous corals, the number of diaphragms is a multiple of four, only four parts grow, now extinct, only fossils remain; Six-shot corals, tentacles and diaphragms are multiples of six, common such as stony corals, black corals and spiny corals; Eight-shot corals, tentacles and diaphragms are multiples of eight, such as sheng coral, gorgonian coral, blue coral, red coral, etc.
According to the characteristics of bones, corals can be divided into stone corals and soft corals. Among them, stony corals have the ability to secrete calcium carbonate to form hard group bones, which is the most important part of the coral reef body, so it is also known as reef-building corals, about 1000 species. Soft corals belong to the eight-shot coral, with beautiful shape, bright colors and bright appearance, which is an important landscape and ecological resource on the seabed.
Depending on the state of life, corals can be divided into monolithic living corals and group living corals. Stony corals live in both individuals and groups, while soft, gorgonian and blue corals live in groups.
According to the chemical composition, corals are divided into two types: calcareous corals and corals. Calcareous corals are mainly composed of calcium carbonate and contain very little organic matter, including three varieties: red coral, white coral and blue coral. The main component of corals is organic matter, including two varieties: black coral and golden coral.
Corals are brilliantly colored
Corals are rich in color and colorful. Common are white, black, blue, red, etc., people are accustomed to calling them white corals, black corals, blue corals, red corals.
The color of a coral depends mainly on the environment in which it grows. The major metal content in seawater is the root cause of coral's rich color.
The South China Sea has the clearest water quality, the warmest climate and the deepest and widest seabed in China's sea area. Due to the green vegetation along the Red River, Mekong River, Chao Phraya River and other rivers flowing into the South China Sea, the river contains less sand and low metal content, making the South China Sea appear turquoise or deep blue all year round. Therefore, the corals that grow in the waters of the South China Sea are mainly white.
White coral is the most common member of the coral family, composed of calcium carbonate, mainly white, off-white, milky white, porcelain white and other colors, generally used to make bonsai technology, special building materials and medicinal materials.
Red corals are formed due to corals absorbing about 1% of iron oxide during growth, and the main component is high magnesium calcium carbonate. In a broad sense, all red colors, fine textures, tough bones, and high magnesium calcium carbonate belong to red corals. In a narrow sense, it refers specifically to a gem-grade red coral that grows on the tropical seabed of 200 meters to 2000 meters. The bones of red corals are dendritic complexes, with a skeletal axis in the center of each branch, the soft body surrounds the bones, and many polyps grow around the axis. Red corals are mainly distributed in the southwestern Pacific Ocean and the eastern Atlantic Coast. The Taiwan Strait red corals are known as Aka red corals and produce about 60% of the world's total annual production. There are also red corals growing around Hainan Island and in the waters of Sansha City in China. Red corals are often light to dark red to orange-red, and some are fleshy red. Gem-grade red corals are divided into five categories: deep red, pink, pink, pink, and white, of which dark red is the most valuable.
The chemical composition of blue coral is calcium carbonate, the form is mostly dendritic, the cross-section has a concentric circle layer of pattern structure and heart point, is also an organic gemstone, mainly produced in China's Hainan, Taiwan and Indonesia near the seabed; It has also been found on the west coast of Africa and is now largely extinct. There is currently a kind of flies, commonly known as blue coral, which is the only coral in the suborder octarian coral that can grow into a large skeleton, widely distributed in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, composing shallow water coral reefs. It has grown in the waters of the South China Sea, the island countries of the South China Sea, Australia, the Middle East and other seas.
Black coral is mainly composed of organic matter, the total amino acids reach more than 60%, and do not contain crystalline mineral components. Black coral is the main species of coral, belonging to the black coral family of the suborder Hexacarp coral, with dendritic structures, dark brown, gray-black to black color, powder or thin edges brown, translucent to opaque, and greasy luster. In the middle of the 20th century, people widely used black coral as jewelry, and the production was sparse, mainly distributed in the tropical waters of the western Pacific Ocean, Sanya, Hainan, and the northern and southern parts of Taiwan.
Coral bonsai courtesy of Li Heng
Red coral only grows 1 inch in 20 years
The polyp is a cylindrical coyrozoan that is automatically fixed to the pile of "bones" of its ancestors in the larval stage, relying on its own tentacles to catch food.
There are many types of corals, and the environments in which they grow are different. But clean water quality, moderate salt, and lush algae are common conditions for the growth of various corals. If the seawater is polluted with too much terrestrial material, the coral's feeding and breathing will be inhibited, and even die in pieces.
Shallow water stony corals grow in sunny tropical and subtropical shallow sea areas, generally known as shallow stony corals or reef-building corals, mainly in groups, while requiring clean water quality, hard substrate, perennial water temperature above 20 °C, the most suitable water temperature of 25 °C - 29 °C, water temperature below 13 °C will die, therefore, there is no reef coral in high latitude seas.
Reef-building corals usually thrive from the surface to a depth of 40 metres, with individual species up to 60 metres deep. Reef-building corals are often symbiotic with zooxanthellae. Zooxanthellae need sunlight and a warm environment to survive, and the shallow sea area is the penetrating layer of daylight, which is conducive to the photosynthesis of zooxanthellae, and due to the action of tides and wind waves, it provides polyps with abundant food and sufficient oxygen. The higher the coral accumulation, the more conducive it is to the survival of algae plants, and the more lush the corals become. In order to better capture food and absorb sunlight, corals, in addition to growing upwards, also expand forward, backward, left and right, gradually forming a group of organisms like dendrites. Coral clusters have accumulated over hundreds of millions of years, gradually forming coral reefs, islands and islands. There are large numbers of shallow stony corals in the intropical or subtropical waters of the Indo-Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic-Caribbean. Most of the islands and reefs off the coast of Sansha, China, are formed by coral clusters.
Deep-water stony corals grow in deep-sea cold water corals, known as deep-water stony corals or non-reef-building stony corals, with a maximum habitat depth of more than 6,000 meters. The corals that grow on the deepest seafloor have been found to be symmetrical fungal cup corals at 6296-6328 meters in the Aleutian Trench. Deep-water stony corals are predominantly monomeric, minority groups, small individuals, cannot become reefs, and the color is monotonous. It is mainly grown in the deep sea between 200 meters and 2000 meters between 30 ° north and south latitudes, requiring a hard solid substrate, fast currents, clean water quality, no land-based sediments, light and water temperature.
Red corals are deep-sea corals. It mainly grows in tropical and subtropical areas with a temperature of higher than 20 °C and its vicinity, with a water depth of 100 meters to 200 meters in calm and clear rocks, platforms, slopes, cliff faces, etc. Red corals grow slowly, it takes 10-12 years from larval growth to breeding period, only 1 inch in 20 years, and 1000 grams in 300 years. Therefore, there is a saying that "the millennium coral is red for thousands of years, and the gold for the ten thousand years of coral race". Due to its growth in deep-sea areas, the collection of red corals is difficult. The annual production of the world is only about 400 tons.
Submarine coral (screenshot of Qiantu Network)
Magical sea elves
Corals are not only the guardians of the marine ecological environment, but also the conservation station of biodiversity, which can be called the "supplier" of human marine wealth.
The economic value of corals Is a wide variety of corals in all shapes. The rich and diverse coral reef discs are beautiful landscapes in their own right and home to many fish, algae and other plankton. It has great attraction for developing fishery production and exploring the mysteries of the ocean. Many high-value seafood products, such as sea cucumbers, lobsters, etc., are caught from coral reefs. In addition, the use of natural corals as a cornerstone for the cultivation of economic algae (Unicorn and Concave-capped algae) has good prospects.
The most common white corals in the South China Sea are tree-shaped, honeycomb-shaped, stalagmite-shaped, cactus-shaped and so on. For overall ornamentation, it usually requires a good shape with various dendritic forms and pure white colors.
The medicinal value of corals Ming Dynasty medicine master Li Shizhen recorded in the "Compendium of Materia Medica" that corals have the effect of "removing the eyes, calming the gods and calming the alarm", which can be used to treat eye diseases, convulsions, nasal scarves and other diseases. Traditional Chinese medicine also believes that coral stone can stop vomiting, diarrhea, and hemostasis, and has the effects of treating low back pain, children's convulsions, clearing heat and detoxification, dissolving phlegm and cough, sweating and diuresis.
Corals, including the many algae that parasitize coral reefs, are rich in a variety of nutrients and chemicals and are a valuable resource for marine biologic medicine. For example, some algae have the effect of alleviating the toxic side effects of cancer radiotherapy and chemotherapy, improving immune function, and reducing blood lipids. For example, some sponge animals have been used in pharmaceuticals to treat herpes and cancer.
The latest foreign research results show that coral can be used for human bone grafting, extracting medicinal natural compounds from corals, which can treat ulcers, arteriosclerosis, hypertension, coronary heart disease and venereal diseases. With the development of medical science and marine biotechnology, the medicinal value of corals will become increasingly large.
The industrial value of corals Coral stone can be used as building stone, and stone coral can be used as a raw material for lime, paint and ceramics. In the 1960s and 1970s, many fishermen mined their own coral to refine lime, polished stone, and built houses. Subsequently, corals were protected by the State, private fishing was prohibited, and the use of corals as ordinary building materials was decreasing.
Coral, the magical sea spirit, protecting coral, is to protect the coastline, protect fishery resources, and protect the good life of human beings.
Coral Bonsai of the Qing Dynasty (Collection of the Palace Museum)
How to identify the authenticity of corals
There are many kinds of corals, and due to the degree of scarcity, composition and preference of people, the ornamental value and medicinal value of various corals are far apart. Although Hainan has banned the processing and sale of corals and their products, some corals and their products have been circulated in the market before. By grasping the characteristics of corals, it is easy to identify authenticity. The main methods of identification are:
Observe the texture. Corals resemble trees, are born with natural textures, and each piece is different. Some coral products, especially red coral, due to the delicate color or fine polishing, the color is gorgeous, it is not easy to see the texture from the appearance only by the naked eye, but under the strong light, you can still see the parallel longitudinal lines on the surface or the irregular texture naturally formed. In particular, the truncated surface can see circles of concentric circles and radial fine lines. If there is no natural texture or the texture is very regular and sluggish, it is counterfeit.
Observe the color. Corals are very colorful, even the same species of coral in the same sea area, it also shows a wide variety of colors. But no matter what color the appearance is, natural coral is permeated from the inside out with a crystal-like natural luster, warm and soft, and the appearance is consistent, the longer the nourishment play, the more crystal clear. This is not available in any synthetic material or artificially colored counterfeit product. Products made of synthetic or pressed coral powder, because the addition of adhesives destroys the unique loose structure of corals, its color is rigid and auraless. Artificially colored coral products, its color floating on the surface, although gorgeous but dull, easy to fade and darken, and the surface is not the same, especially in the cracks, deep carvings or sections, etc., can find the difference in color and shades of the surface, with cotton balls dipped in acetone rubbing, cotton balls will appear red. Fake corals with imitations such as sea willow and sea bamboo have uniform colors and loose texture structures, but the color is dull.
Observe flaws. Corals are the "home" of corals, with countless holes. These perforations are either deep or shallow, thick or thin, or black or white, forming spots of irregular flaws. The larger the coral, the more flaws there are. This is also an important basis for identifying corals. If the whole coral tree or the larger piece of coral handicrafts, etc., do not have any holes and other flaws in the whole body, or the size and depth of the flaws are the same, and the arrangement is orderly, then it requires a high degree of suspicion and vigilance.
Observe the structure. The main components of coral are calcium carbonate and, loose structure, brittle and brittle, the fracture is flat and sharp, the feel is moderate weight, and the fine and regular trachea or burr-like object can be seen under high magnification, and the glare flashlight has a certain light transmittance. Some imitations of plastic, glass, marble, etc., although they also have a certain degree of light transmittance, but there is no loose structural features, only granular structures or local gaseous packages, the feel is either too heavy or too light. Some bone imitations have a pore-like structure but are rough, flexible and not easy to brittle, and the fractures are jagged.
In addition, the sound of corals tapping each other is crisp, while the sound of plastic and bone products is dull and cloudy; Corals will blister in contact with acid to produce chemical reactions, while imitations such as plastics, bones, and glass do not respond. (Lu Ming)