------Program code: NS-080902-02183 (what's this?)
Source: CCTV.com
09-02-2008 10:09
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The male flying squirrel is leaving the love nest, now that the female is pregnant. The young will be born in three months’ time. The mother will bring them up all by itself.
During pregnancy or lactation, a female flying squirrel will be slow to move. This will make her vulnerable to attack by a predator. So the mother will rarely fly far from home and will always be highly vigilant.
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At the first sign of danger, they will move their babies to safety.
Like the silver fir, the hemlock is another kind of “living fossil” that escaped extinction during the Ice Age. Hemlock usually grows at an altitude of 2000m. Winter has already arrived here, while it’s still summer in the forest below.
The plants begin to bear fruit in July. The brighter the fruit, the better, since it will attract animals, which will help with the reproduction. With the ripening of the fruit, the animals bring the forest to life.
It’s now that the little silver fir’s greatest enemy arrives. Pine caterpillars live off plant leaves that are rich in fat. A caterpillar can eat more than thirty needles a day.
The pine caterpillar is not in a hurry. It’ll wait to begin its meal until the little silver fir is drier and producing more sugar.
But the pine caterpillar has its own natural enemy – the green-backed tit. However, this would-be protector of the little silver fir is busy looking after its young in the tree caves.
During the ten days or more of the breeding period, the mother tit will make more than two hundred flights a day, to catch insects to feed to her young. The pine caterpillar has a taste of the little silver fir’s leaves. But the leaves are not yet at their best.
The mother tit doesn’t notice the little silver fir because she has flown so high to catch insects. The mother tit likes to keep everything clean. Every time, after her young have been fed, she cleans up their droppings.
The pine caterpillar has climbed up to the first layer of leaves on the little silver fir. But then the green-backed tit notices it.
Autumn is delivery time for the “Lord of the Firs”.
The ripe seeds of the silver fir, having stayed in the fruit for thirty one months, fly away with the help of the wind.
The silver pheasants are also waiting for the wind. It will blow down their food from the trees. The “Lord of the Firs” can bear 270 seeds at most. But only a few of them will survive the silver pheasants’ plunder and grow into young silver firs.
Across Southwest China, more than four thousand silver firs in four forests have started this process of delivery.
These “living fossils” from twenty million years ago are still striving to the utmost to produce a new generation.
The ripe fruits of the chinquapins and poplars are falling to the ground. The silver pheasant family will spend more than ten happy days in this natural restaurant.
And their squirrel friends will provide several other varieties of food.
The silver pheasants begin to fly back to the mountain for the winter. Although the favourable ecological environment here provides them with a natural shelter, they are like the flying squirrels and silver firs, in that their physical functions begin to degenerate.
But for the four-year-old silver fir, another year means another layer of leaves. It’ll enter adolescence at the age of ten. And a silver fir will blossom and bear fruit after the age of eighteen. Only then can it be called the true heir.
For 50 years a sample taken from the “Lord of the Firs” has been kept in the archive at the Institute of Botany. Recently, with the help of genetic technology, the scientists discovered the cause of the main impediment to the reproductive ability of the silver firs. It’s in-breeding.
In the autumn a new general research project begins in the forest. A genetic sample from the “Lord of the Firs” and soil samples are taken for scientists to conduct molecular research.
The research produces a surprise. The shadows on the cliff are in fact thirty one silver firs enjoying the quiet of the mountain top.
Of even greater interest is the discovery that silver firs from different generations form a clear stepped distribution. The discovery could help solve the mystery of the silver fir’s reproduction.
The “Lord of the Firs” discovered fifty years ago is still standing on its cliff. Chinese botanists have given it a Latin name: “Cathaya”, which means “Tree of China”.
Editor:Yang
