China News Service, Kunming, April 24 (Chen Zhifa) The reporter learned from the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on the 24th that recently, a very small population of wild plants P. The special garden has entered the "blooming period", which means that the ex situ protection of Pinus chinensis has been basically successful.
The picture shows the five-needle pine cones in Kunming Botanical Garden in full bloom.
Photo courtesy of Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Pinus triceratops, also known as Pinus chinensis in Yunnan and Pinus in southern Yunnan, is endemic to Yunnan. It is a single vascular pine subgenus of the Pinaceae genus. It is scattered in Malipo, Xichou and Maguan in Wenshan Prefecture, Yunnan Province. The limestone areas in several counties are sparse and not forests.
So far, only 358 pine trees have been found, and there are only more than 200 adult individuals, and the size of each subpopulation does not exceed 20.
Pinus chinensis was listed as one of the 120 species of wild plants with extremely small populations in the country in 1999 as a national level II key protected wild plant and in urgent need of rescue and protection.
The picture shows the five-needle pine cones in Kunming Botanical Garden in full bloom.
Photo courtesy of Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Kunming Botanical Garden has carried out ex situ conservation research on Pinus chinensis since 1988.
In 1989, the garden was first introduced.
Among them, the P. chinensis, which was protected by ex situ protection from burning Liangzi in Malipo County, bore fruit in 2009, but the seeds did not develop; well-developed seeds were obtained in 2013.
In order to continue in-depth research on ex situ conservation of P. chinensis, in the autumn of 2014, Kunming Botanical Garden introduced a batch of one-year-old seedlings.
In 2015, 25 seedlings were ex-situ protected in the Kunming Botanical Garden's very small population wild plant special garden.
The reporter learned that after years of scientific management and protection by the park managers, these seedlings have all survived and grown into healthy plants with an average height of 1.8m.
One of the individuals set fruit for the first time in 2021, but no cones were observed and recorded at that time, only two cones were seen hanging.
This year, a total of 12 pine pine trees have entered their full bloom, with bulbs all over the branches, and another one has 3 fruits.
This marks the basic success of the ex situ protection of P. maozhi in Kunming Botanical Garden, and also shows that P. maozhi has strong adaptability and broad prospects for the exploration and utilization of germplasm resources.
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