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The Cathay Silver Fir: Its Discovery and Journey out of China

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The Cathay Silver Fir: Its Discovery and Journey out of China The Cathay Silver Fir: Its Discovery and Journey Out of China Christopher B. Callaghan ETUM OR B L AR IA ll that glitters isn’t gold. Some- NN TE times it’s silver, especially N when it’s the rare Cathay sil- ICE N B A IA ver fir (Cathaya argyrophylla). It is L A now over 50 years since the discovery R UST of this “living fossil”, yet it remains A largely unknown. Access to this conifer has been tightly controlled by China; reportedly, even the offer of a Trident jet in exchange for a sin- gle plant during the late 1970s was not sufficient to entice the Chinese to release their grip on this endemic “treasure tree,” whose fir-like leaves reflect their silvery undersides when they catch the sunlight. This offer may not sound so far- fetched when compared with the more recently discovered Wollemi pine (Wol- lemia nobilis) of Australia, which has grossed millions of dollars in world- Prominent stomatic bands on the undersides of leaves give Cathaya argy- wide sales since its public release in rophylla its silvery flash. early 2007 following a well- orches- trated marketing and publicity campaign high- western cultivation from China in late 1947, lighting its ancient origins. Earlier, a pre-release a mere six years after its discovery. This was auction of the first Wollemi pines realized over thanks in large part to the efforts of Elmer D. one million Australian dollars with an average Merrill, then Arnold Professor of Botany at of A$3,627 per tree, and this without any Amer- the Arnold Arboretum and previously the ican bids because of U.S. import restrictions on Arboretum’s director. trees over 18 inches (0.5m) tall. So for China, By the time of the discovery of Cathaya argy- the Cathay silver fir—mass produced and prop- rophylla just eight years later, the changing erly marketed to the west—had the potential of political landscape in China and the cutting of being a similar financial success story. ties with the west meant that this botanically Described as another “living fossil” when it interesting tree, which Chinese botanists have made world headlines in the 1950s, the Cathay described as “The Giant Panda of the Plant King- silver fir did not make it out of China prior to dom,” was to languish in near obscurity for over its official release by Chinese authorities in thirty years. Even with the gradual lifting of the the 1990s. In contrast, dawn redwood (Metase- bamboo curtain post-1972, it still took many quoia glyptostroboides), the previous world- years before the Chinese allowed the tree to be renowned “living fossil”, was introduced into taken out of the country, or distributed any seeds 16 Arnoldia 66/3 to overseas botanical insti- tutions. Consequently, the Cathay silver fir is still lit- tle known even today, more than half a century after its scientific discovery. A New Plant is Found This discovery occurred in 1955 during a botanical exploration of the remote Huaping region of north- ern Kwangsi province (now Guangxi Zhuang Autono- mous Region) in south- ern China. Deng Xianfu, a member of the Kwangfu- Lingchu Expedition, literally Sketch maps not to scale unearthed the first Cathay silver fir when he dug up a Numbers on the enlarged map seedling of what he thought indicate the approximate locations was Keteleeria fortunei. Fol- of wild Cathaya (see facing page). lowing a closer inspection Additionally, Cathaya argyrophylla is said to occur at Luohandong in of the seedling, expedition Hunan province and in Tongzi county, leader Professor Zhong Jixin Guizhou province. The approximate found that it didn’t resemble position of these two localities has not Fortune’s keteleeria. He also been determined and is therefore not indicated on the map. knew that Keteleeria fortu- C.M. = Chongqing Municipality. nei, while occurring natu- rally in Kwangsi province, could not survive there at above 1400 meters (4600 feet) in the Tianping later renamed Kwangtung Institute of Botany Mountains, and so considered that it might be a (now held at Guangxi Institute of Biology). new species of Keteleeria. Here they were seen by the Soviet botanist Upon receiving further information that a tree Sugatchey [likely a mistranslation of the name had been seen in these mountains with some Sukachev] who advised that they resembled resemblance to both a pine (Pinus) and a fir (Abies), plant fossils previously found in the Soviet Professor Zhong realized that they should be look- Union and Europe dating back to the Pliocene ing for something special. He directed expedition of the Tertiary Period, and hence the newly members to intensify their efforts to find the par- discovered tree represented a “living fossil”. ent plant(s) of the unfamiliar seedling. Cathaya fossils found since then include fossil Continued searching of the precipitous, pollen in Asia and North America dating back mist-shrouded mountains led to the discovery to the Cretaceous. of a mature tree on the southern slopes of Mt. Chun Woon Young (Chen Huanyong) and Hongya on May 16, 1955. Herbarium specimens Kuang Ko Zen (Kuang Keren) published a were collected by expedition members, with description of the new genus and species in 1958. further specimens collected from the same They also described a second species, Cathaya locality by H.C. Lei, H.C. Chung, H.L. Hsu and nanchuanensis, discovered in 1955 on Jinfo Shan H.F. Tan from May to July the following year. (Golden Buddha Mountain) in southeastern Sich- All these specimens were deposited at the her- uan. However, this name was reduced to a syn- barium of the South-China Institute of Botany, onym of Cathaya argyrophylla in 1978. Cathay Silver Fir 17 Natural Occurrences of Cathaya in China PROVINCE/ NUMBER LOcatION REGION ON MAP (Reserve area in ha) GUANGXI ZHUANG Dayao Mountain Nature Reserve (aka Dayao Shan National AUTONOMOUS REGION ➊ Forest Park) Established 1982. Jinxiu County. Huaping Nature Reserve (aka Huaping Primeval Forest), Mt Tianping. Established 1961. Sanmen, Longsheng County ➋ (type specimen of Cathaya argyrophylla found here in 1955 near Yezhutang, Southern slope of Mount Hongya). Cathay Silver Fir Nature Reserve (aka Dashahe Cathaya GUIZHOU ➌ Reserve) Established 1984. Daozhen Xian, Daozhen County. Forest Reserve of Guizhou Botanical Garden. Founded 1964. ➍ Liuchongguan, Guiyang. Mount Fanjing Nature Reserve. Established 1978. ➎ Jiangkou County. Dingliao Nature Reserve. Established 1986. Zixing HUNAN ➏ County/ Bamian Mountain Nature Reserve est. 1982. Guidong County. Ziyunwanfeng Mountain Nature Reserve. Established 1982. ➐ Xinning and Chengbu Counties. CHONGQING MUNICIPALITY Wulong County. (previously part of Sichuan Province) ➑ Jinfo Mountains Nature Reserve. Established 1979. ➒ Nanchuan County. (Cathaya nanchuanensis, now regarded as an ecotype of C. argyrophylla, found here in 1955.) The generic name Cathaya derives from the ping Nature Reserve in 1961 to protect the first historic place name Cathay, a dominion of the found population of the trees. This was one of Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan at the time of the earliest nature reserves created in China. Marco Polo’s travels during the late thirteenth Since 1976 many more nature reserves have century, and now the northern section of today’s been established throughout China, and around China. However, the areas of the present day 4,000 Cathay silver firs presently occur in about natural occurrence of Cathaya are actually out- a dozen of these (see map). side the realm of what was known as Cathay Even when China opened to the west in the in Marco Polo’s time. Instead, they fall within late 1970s, these nature reserves were gener- another of Kublai Khan’s dominions known as ally off-limits to most foreigners. As late as Mangi or Manzi, now the region of China south 1997, I and my colleague S.K. Png of the Aus- of the Yangtze River. So perhaps in a histori- tralian Bicentennial Arboretum, during a visit cal context the name Mangia would have been to Guizhou Botanical Garden in Guiyang, were more appropriate, although without the appeal steered clear of the natural stand of Cathaya of implied antiquity in the name Cathaya. argyrophylla growing in the forest reserve of the garden. A similar situation befell the authors of Guarding the Silver Southwest China, Off the Beaten Track while The significance of the discovery of the Cathay they were researching their book during the silver fir in 1955 was considered by the Chinese mid-1980s, and were discouraged from visiting to be so important that they established Hua- Huaping Nature Preserve in Longsheng County, 18 Arnoldia 66/3 available for cultivation elsewhere. The earli- ETUM est record I’ve found for Cathaya argyrophylla OR B introduced outside China is a 1993 accession at L AR IA the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, Australia, NN The accession’s exact fate wasn’t recorded, but TE N as of May, 2003, it was listed as “no longer in ICE the nursery”. However, since plants which had N B IA lost their identification labels in the botanic L A R garden’s nursery were sometimes sold at the UST A annual Friends of the Garden’s plant sales, it is at least possible that the oldest Cathaya in cultivation outside of China is growing unrec- ognized in a yard somewhere in Sydney. The next earliest year for introduction of defi- nitely surviving Cathaya argyrophylla is 1995 when seeds were received by the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland from Shenzhen Seven- and ten-year-old trees at the Australian Bicenten- nial Arboretum are the first known Cathaya in cultiva- Botanical Garden in China. These seeds were tion outside of China to bear male and female strobili then redistributed by Edinburgh’s Conifer Con- (a male strobus on the seven-year-old tree is shown here).
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