Plant Exploration in China: Travelogue Part II

Tony Aiello, our Director of Horticulture & Curator of the Living Collection is currently in north-western China on a month-long expedition. Traveling with colleagues from Beijing Botanical Garden, the Morton Arboretum, and Arnold Arboretum, the mission of the trip is to document paperbark maple (Acer griseum) across its natural range and study its genetic diversity.

“It's Monday afternoon and we just finished our last day in the field. Sunday was pretty low key and I think we all needed a day to relax, especially Kang. Saturday was a late one and we did not get to our hotel until close to midnight. We were staying in Louyang, a city of 1.8 million people in Henan province, a very cosmopolitan and modern city, which was an interesting change after several days in the countryside. One remarkable thing about our travels is that you get cultural whiplash, moving from villages with very simple lifestyles, to large modern cities in the matter of a few hours.

So far we've driven close to 2,000 miles on the trip. We are now in southern Shanxi, very close to where we collected in 2002. The landscape looks familiar, but we're not sure what town we stayed in back then, and even if we were, things have changed so much that the town probably would not be recognizable. We are here for two nights and then head back to Xi'an, where we will celebrate Kris's birthday, among other things.

We continue to have success in finding the populations of Acer griseum, which I call the red-barked needle in the green-leaved haystack. Even at best, there are a few dozen trees scattered throughout the hillsides, and we've learned to ask the local farmers if they know the tree that we are looking for. They usually do because of their close connections to the land and have been able to lead us pretty much directly to the trees. All of the locals have been very friendly and helpful, and without their help the trip would have been much less successful.

Since I last checked in, we visited two populations in Henan province. The first was at Bao Tian Man Nature Preserve, a beautiful location in the mountains, filled with streams and waterfalls. The population of paperbark maple that we found there was by far the most robust of the trip, with 60-75 large trees lining both sides of a valley. Among these larger trees were numerous seedlings, something that we had not seen before this location. The second area in Henan was a rural location, set among villages where much of the woodlands were harvested for fire wood. Still, we were able to find a good number of larger trees and again, a number of seedlings.

So today, we headed to Mang He Nature Preserve, where there is a native population of wild macaques, along with the northernmost paperbark maple. We had another successful day, collected samples from eight trees from another beautiful location.

Overall it's been a very successful trip and we've found Acer griseum at eight of the nine locations that we've visited. We've sampled 64 trees, including seed one from paperbark maple, and have also made another seven seed collections, including Hydrangea aspera, Acer oblongum, and Cephalotaxus fortunei.

Tomorrow we head back to Xi'an, where we will pack up our samples and seed so that they can be shipped back to the U.S., and do a little sight-seeing in Xi'an before returning to the U.S. on Friday.”

Read Travelogue Part I here.

Plant Exploration in China: Travelogue Part I

Pictured left to right: Tony Aiello of Morris Arboretum, Michael Dosmann of Arnold Arboretum, and Kris Bachtell of Morton Arbortetum with Acer griseum - paperbark maple

Tony Aiello, our Director of Horticulture & Curator of the Living Collection is currently in north-western China on a month-long expedition. Traveling with colleagues from Beijing Botanical Garden, the Morton Arboretum, and Arnold Arboretum, the mission of his trip is to document paperbark maple (Acer griseum) across its natural range and study its genetic diversity. 

“It has been a hectic trip so far and we have really been on the go. Basically, we've been staying in one place each night and then moving every day, so it's been hard to catch up. We are now in the town of Ankang, Shaanxi Province, and plan to stay here for two nights, which feels like a real luxury.

The trip has been a success so far. On our first day of collecting we found the solitary Acer griseum tree that we had seen in 2010 in Hong He Gu (Red River Valley) in Tai Bai Mountain near Xi'an. The next day was not so successful, when, after some long driving on dirt roads, we found the area where Acer griseum is reported but were not able to find the plants, even after climbing some steep terrain. 

This was discouraging and on our minds the next day as we drove 10 hours south to Sichuan. After a morning of driving through road construction and finding many other interesting plants, in the afternoon we found the trail that we had been looking for and began a strenuous hike up the mountain side. This was well worth it and that day we came across seven trees, including some large and magnificent old specimens. One of these had seed that we were able to collect.

After another day of driving, we ended up in a small village in Chongqing (a large municipality and not technically a province), where we stayed in small local hotel, the Chinese equivalent to a b&b (Kang calls these family hotels). We were in a remote location and made a big sensation in this small town, with many of the locals, especially the kids, coming to see us and help us clean seed. We found a local farmer who knew about the trees that we were looking for, and again, after a rigorous hike (to put it mildly), we found a large population, and sampled 22 plants in an area smaller than a football field.

We are now in Shaanxi province, in the city of Ankang, which it turns out, is the namesake of our intrepid host and guide from Beijing, Kang Wang. Today we drove three hours to find the "holy hannah" behemoth of a tree that Rick Lewandoski had seen in 1995. Thanks to Rick's excellent notes, we found the same plant, and were equally impressed by its age and size. This tree is certainly the largest recorded in China, and we were all amazed to be in its presence. In the same area we saw what was by far the largest Corylus fargesii (Farges filbert) that any of us have seen and made a seed collection from it.

Tomorrow we head to Henan province to look for three populations of paperbark maple.”

Read Travelogue Part II here.

Follow along on this amazing horticultural journey on our blog and learn more about Morris Arboretum’s Collaborative Plant Exploration Program with China here.