The Wild Flowers of Tibet [English / Chinese]

About this book

Language: Bilingual in English and Chinese

The Wild Flowers of Tibet is an album showing the value in resource science and the characters in distribution and adaptation of Tibetan wild flower plants. The majority of wild flower species was edited according to ecological regions of the Tibet plateau: from the dry and humid alpine barrens to the valleys and gorges of the highland; from the subalpine and temperate forests to the laurisilvae and rain or monsoon forest in the plateau edge mountains. It is a collection of the author's 20 year field achievements in Tibet.

Hundreds of ornamental and economical wild flower species of Tibet produce a gene pool for research and development. The alpine flowers occupy an important space in this pool, within which there are well-known alpine flowers of rhododendron, primrose and gentian, with their 190, 120 and 110 species in Tibet. Moreover, the species of Pedicularis, Meconopsis and Corydalis are quite abundant. The wild flowers of Tibet belong to various life forms. For instance, there are Lagerstroemia minuticarpa, Erythrina arborescens, Michelia velutina and Prunus mira as trees; Meconopsis, Gentiana and Lilium as herbs and Clematis montana as lianas.

As from the flora of Tibet, from the wild flowers of Tibet we get a hint that Tibet might be a centre of species' origin and differentiation. Paeonis ludlowii, Rhododendron nuttallii, Omphalogramma tibeicum, Mussaenda decipiens, Calanthe metoensis and Cypripedium elegans have their column of rare or endemic species in the list of wild flowers.

The distribution of Tibet's wild flowers is rather extensive. They are in very different positions and environments which the folllowing changes are identified: the series of moisture from arid and semiarid to semimoist and moist; the series of temperate from alpine frigid zone and frigid–temperate zone to warm–temperate zome and mountain tropical zone; the vegetation types from semimoist coniferous and broad leaved deciduous forests to rain forests, from frigid–temperate coniferous forests to tropical forests, and from scrubs and steppes to meadows and wetlands; as well as the landforms of glacier, desert, dune, highland, valley and gorge.

When you see Incarvillea and Iris on the barren, the multi-coloured rhododendrons in the forest or on the slope, and the beautiful orchids – epiphytic or terrestrial, you will be surprised by the powerful potential of life and nature.

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