Thanks to a decade-long effort, experts with the Nanjing Botanical Garden Mem. Sun Yat-sen have successfully saved 81 species of endangered plants by establishing a rare plants database, Xinhua News Agency reported on December 4.

 

Of those saved, 40 species have seen an increase in growth areas, such as the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostrobides), ginkgo, and yam (Dioscorea batatas), with the latter being a material used to extract certain substances for producing hormone drugs.

 

The report states that there are 400,000-about plant species in the world among which under 70 percent have been catalogued by human beings and 15 percent are endangered or extinct. There are over 30,000 named species of plants in China with 15 to 20 percent of them are on the verge of extinction or already extinct.

 

The Nanjing Sun Yat-sen Memorial Botanical Garden began establishing the database for endangered plants in the 1990s and has already created up files for about 3,000 species of plants. The database traced and recorded each plant’s living environment and characteristics, its place of origin, and habitat, while the garden joined with concerned departments to carry out on-the-spot rapid conservation, according to Prof. He Shan’an, chairman of the International Association of Botanical Gardens (IABG) and honorary director of the Nanjing Botanical Garden.

 

The Nanjing Sun Yat-sen Memorial Botanical Garden is the country’s first national botanical garden established in 1929. It bore the original name of 'Sun Yat-sen Memorial Botanical Garden', dedicated to the memory of Mr. Sun Yat-Sen, the pioneer of the Chinese democratic revolution. The garden is located inside the state-level Zhongshan Scenic Zone on the eastern suburb of Nanjing, capital city of eastern China’s Jiangsu Province, with a total area of 186 hectares. The garden has now developed into a well-known botanical facility with beautiful settings and comprehensive functions including display, education and scientific research.

 

As a research center on Chinese central and northern subtropical floras, the garden has a living collection of about 3,000 plant species. The herbarium contained a total amount of 700,000 sheets of specimens. There are five research departments: Ornamental Plant Research Center, Medicinal Plant Research Center, Plant Information Center, Key Laboratory of Plant Ex-situ Conservation and the Herbarium, the biggest such in eastern China. Ten featured plantations (sections) have been constructed and opened.

 

(China.org.cn translated by Zhang Tingting December 7, 2006)