NINE IBC delegates joined a field trip between July 17 and 22 before the opening of the XIX International Botanical Congress. Led by guide Yan-Song Peng, members of the group conducted field research on Jinggang Mountain, the middle of the Luoxiao Mountains, Lushan Mountain and Poyang Lake. Luoxiao is a south-north range of tall mountains on the border of Hunan and Jiangxi provinces.

The trip spanned three national nature reserves and a famous botanical garden.

At the first stop, in Jinggang Mountain, the group studied rare plants, a typical valley monsoon evergreen broad-leaf forest, characteristic conifer-broadleaf forests, vegetation landscapes, such as that of rhododendron, and some historical cultural sites.

The second stop on the trip was Lushan Mountain, which is a geopark listed as a UNESCO world cultural landscape heritage. The members studied the typical zone vegetation and Quaternary glacial relics on Lushan. The group visited Lushan Botanical Garden, which is the home of a large collection of exotic plant populations, a geological museum and China’s oldest existing school, Bailudong College.

During the group’s third stop in Wucheng Township, the botanists studied Poyang Lake Wetland, the largest fresh water lake wetland in China, and paid a visit to a bird specimen museum.

(Lin Min)