------Program code: NS-080902-01778 (what's this?)
Source: CCTV.com
09-02-2008 09:42
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In the spring of 1955, botanist Zhong Jixin led a scientific research team to the hinterland of Yuecheng Mountain in Guangxi. They were looking for a tree.
After more than a month, they finally found the old tree on a remote cliff 1400 metres above sea level. The local people called it the “lord of the firs”.
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It was an unusual looking tree, and Zhong Jixin wondered if it might belong to a new species, neither pine nor fir. So he took a cutting, and left.
Back in Beijing, the scientists were surprised by what they found. The “Lord of the Firs” appeared to share certain similarities with a plant fossil unearthed in Europe.
The fossil was of a kind of conifer from twenty million years ago. Until the discovery of the “Lord of the Firs”, scientists believed the species had died out early in the Ice Age.
The discovery of the living fossil – the “Lord of the Firs” – created a worldwide sensation. It was a big tree, and because it seemed to glitter when ruffled by a breeze, it was given the name “silver fir”.
The forest is located in Southwest China. Nature has been leaving its mark here, ever since the fourth Ice Age.
Rain and mist are common here. At higher altitudes, the moisture in the air quickly freezes on the plants.
The silver fir, having survived the long Ice Age, is most accustomed to the weather in winter.
Research on the fourth ice age suggests that between 1.6 million and eighteen thousand years ago, a third of the earth’s surface was covered with ice. Many species were wiped out, including most of the silver fir’s ancestors, which had been widespread across Eurasia. Only a few survived, in refuges among the great mountains of Southwest China.
Winter does not last long in the south.
After the snow melts, a little silver fir can be seen sprouting at the foot of the “Lord of the Firs”.
For the past seventeen years, there has been no sign of anything sprouting around the “Lord of the Firs”. But now a miracle has appeared, in the form of a small silver fir.
