Ex situ cultivated flora of China
Hongwen HUANG
South China Botanical Garden CAS, Guangzhou, China
With approximately 33 000 higher plant species, half of which are endemic, China
ranks as one of the top countries in the world as a centre of floristic significance.
This tremendous plant diversity encompasses a huge number of species of bryophytes
(c. 2 200 species), pteridophytes (c. 2 600 species), gymnosperms (c. 250
species), and angiosperms (over 30 000 species) that occur in China, accounting
for 9.1 %, 22 %, 26.7 % and 10 % of the world total, respectively. The Chinese
flora constitutes the living remnants of the early Miocene floras of the whole
North Temperate regions and is the sources of numerous crops and of medicinal
and horticultural plants. Furthermore, a long history of agricultural civilization
and crop plant domestication in China has generated an enormous variety of
cultivated germplasm of crops, vegetables, fruits and ornamentals. However, the
plant diversity in China is increasingly vulnerable, with an estimated 4 000 to
5 000 plant species threatened or on the verge of extinction, thus attracting one
of the highest priorities for global biodiversity conservation. Coming in the face of
the current ecological crisis, China has increasingly recognized the importance
of plant diversity to the country’s efforts to conserve and sustainably use plant
diversity.
Botanical garden conserved flora is quite extensive. A recent survey
shows that the Chinese botanical gardens have maintained living collections of
23 340 species belonging to 3 633 genera, and 396 families in ex situ conservation.
This presentation provides a comprehensive introduction to a long term
plan of a recentinitiative of 'Ex situ Cultivated Flora of China', aiming three main
goals: 1) Enhancement of taxonomic research with common-garden based living
specimens.
The morphological and biological data collecting from common garden
should provide both adequate and accuratedescription and delimitation of
difficult
taxa when traditional taxonomy revision were made based on herbarium
specimens;
2) Support of comparative biology and frontier plant science research,
such as: withincreasing awareness of environmental and habitat changes in the
overall background of climate changes on plant distributions in situ, the 'Ex situ
Cultivated Flora' project should provide intensive plant biological information
from different gardens across a wide spectrum of different latitudes, regional climates
and habitats to related research on species adaptive evolution, plant migration
and distribution shift and physiological or/and biochemical changes, etc.;
3) Strengthening germlasm discovery and sustainability of plant resources should
enhance our current progress with medicinal plants, industrial bio-energy plants,
landscaping and ornamental plants, new functional fruits and vegetables, environmental
meliorating plants, etc. The project of 'Ex situ Cultivated Flora' is expected
to be an important initiative of plant diversity research for sustainable economic
and social development in China.
© 2012 Organizing Committee
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