More and more research showed that plant secondary metabolites have a variety of ecological functions such as defense, attraction, signaling and UV protection. Researchers LI Shenghong and his colleagues, under the support of starting funding for talent introduction of Kunming Institute of Botany, the independent projects of State Key Laboratory and National Natural Science Foundation, establis...
Tuber F. H. Wigg. produce subterranean ascomata known as truffles in commercial market andis of great ecological importance and scientific value. Some of them are very popular edible mushrooms and called “black diamond” or “food of God” for their special flavor and high price. In recent years, by the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Natural Science Foundation...
In March 2011, with the support of related research project, members of SHUI Yumin’s research group of Kunming Institute of Botany went to Deqin and Heqing County in Yunnan province working for plant survey for about one week.
Owing to the construction road and unfortunately suffered heavy snow and small scaled rock and mud slides and landslide, the exploring process become relatively diff...
Two years after his landmark work, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”, Charles Darwin in a letter to Joseph Hooker, the assistant director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, wrote “I never was more interested in any subject in my life, than this of orchids”. In 1862, Darwin published a book “On the Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects” in wh...
Doctor ZHANG Ticao and Professor SUN Hang published their new findings on biogeographic implications of Dry-Hot (Warm) Valleys of Southwest (SW) China. Their findings suggest that tectonic events not only made the continuous range of organisms into disjunctive pieces, but also made the disjunctions into continuous.
It is commonly known that the topography of Hengduan Mountains, SW China, ha...
Soroseris, Stebbinsia, and Syncalathium are three genera of the sunflower family (Asteraceae) with restricted distributions on high screes of the Tibetan Plateau. A molecular analysis to test the monophyly of the genera, evaluate the phylogenetic relationships and construct their biogeographic diversification history.
Nuclear ITS and plastid trnL-F and psbA-trnH fragments were analyzed with...
Being low in calories and high in proteins, fibre, vitamins and minerals, a large number of wild mushrooms are valuable for food, and, thus, the consumption of wild edible mushrooms, a popular delicacy in many countries, has been increasing very rapidly.
Mushroom poisoning cases have been frequently reported in East Asia or even in other parts of the world. Some of the toxins in the mushroo...
Mycorrhizae play a vital role in the life cycle and evolutionary history of orchids. The genera Cypripedium and Paphiopedilum, both belonging to the subfamily Cypripedioideae of the Orchidaceae, are very well known as slipper orchids in horticultural science. However, due to the environment disruption and over collection of the orchids, all species in the two genera are listed in the Appendix o...
Predicting global change is a scientific question as well as a general concern of human society. To accurately predict global change, we must master the climate changes in geologic history time and history period. The reconstruction of paleclimate can not only provide important basic information for predicting global change, but also provide an opportunity to discuss the interrelationship betwe...
