Geographically, Taiwan is an isolated island. On this island lives more than 5,000 types of vascular plants—something in which the residents of Taiwan take pride but phytogeography scholars take a more reserved view. Jeju, an island less than 1/20th of Taiwan, has 2,000 types, and the Philippines has over 8,000, over half of which are endemic. Yu Chih-chieh, the author of the book The Plants That Go to the World–The Historical Journey of Taiwan’s High Mountain Plants, hopes to look at Taiwan’s geological age and natural history rather than numbers to appreciate Taiwan’s uniqueness.
Cover of the book《The Plants That Go to the World–The Historical Journey of Taiwan’s High Mountain Plants》. Image sourced from kingstone.com.
When the Taiwanese people stress the uniqueness of their island, is it just wishful thinking or is there some truth? Yu, who was climbing mountains all throughout his undergrad years, wrote his Ph.D. thesis on a plant called barberries and earned his degree from National Taiwan University’s forestry department. He wanted to continue to explore the relationship between Taiwan and the world through plants, and uncover the natural secrets of this island on the northeastern side of the Pacific, formed by the Philippines Plate sneaking under the Eurasian Plate.
Yu recalls a particular field trip in Jeju with other scholars from Taiwan, Korea and Japan. At night, while everyone was arguing over whose country is better at baseball, a Japanese scholar whispered to him, “no matter your nationality, us working on plants should not have national boundaries when doing research.” Yu realized that while people have nationalities, plants don’t. Each species came about from millions of years of time and space, across physical barriers and environments. Related species may be separated by tens of millions of miles—not something lines drawn by humans can contain. Years later, as Yu reflects on this statement, he strives to look at how a plant and its sisters or relatives are spread around the world. Not only does this break national boundaries, it also tells a story of how Taiwan is connected to the rest of the world.
The title of the book The Plants That Go to the World means that the island of Taiwan is like a transfer station for plants. Plants from all over the world have come to Taiwan, and also have gone forth from Taiwan to the world. The endemic plants in Taiwan are mostly relatives of plants from elsewhere but have evolved with Taiwan’s particular geology and climate, and eventually became different enough from their relatives to be its own new species.
If there were a world expo for plants, who would represent Taiwan the best? Yu nominates the Sinopanax (Sinopanax formosana), a plant that has over the last century been accepted as the only genus within the Araliaceae family in Taiwan. This plant is also the only plant within the Sinopanax genus, making it the perfect representative of Taiwan.
As a hiker turned student of plants, Yu discovered that the Sinopanax does not exist as a forest, but often on its own in trails of the medium height mountains. His thesis advisor told him that the Sinopanax is very similar in shape to another plant in the Americas. Why are these plants from so far apart related to each other? Perhaps the mysteries of the plant world are far beyond the human imagination.
Within the 5,000-plus kinds of endemic plants, the barberry is one of the most unloved by most people. Its thorns often poke tiny holes in hikers’ backpacks. Yu focused his research on this little plant that spreads faster than cockroaches that no one else is interested in. Yu discovered that, since the island of Taiwan was created by tectonic activity six million years ago, the ancestor of the barberry had come to Taiwan from the Asian mainland and began to spread and grew into eleven species as Taiwan’s geology morphed. This is unlike anywhere else on earth; barberries are almost never found on islands and never with this much diversity. The way that the barberry spread around the globe and found its way to Taiwan again proves that, within the world of plants, Taiwanese plants have their origins but also developed their own unique characteristics and stories.
Compared to our own hundred-odd year lifespan, six million years is a long time. But for plants, it is a short time to develop into different species. Yu postulates that the reason is Taiwan’s sharp, high altitude mountains and monsoons that cross the island created a wide diversity of biomes, from tropic, sub-tropic, to temperate and subarctic climates. Different climates spurred the development of different species. It is a wonder that an island of barely 13,000 square miles can provide such a range of biomes.
During the Japanese colonial era, taxonomist Bunzo Hayata pointed out that the plants from Taiwan’s mid-altitude temperate climate resembles southwest China, and the high-altitude plants resemble those from the Hengduan mountains (near Yunnan and Tibet) or the Japanese archipelago, including Japanese hinoki cypress and what’s commonly known as the wheel tree. The Plants That Go to the World analyzes plant families that originate from the Eurasian mainland, as well as those that came from Australia, New Guinea and Borneo—a puzzling feat, considering how they plant has to migrate from the southern hemisphere to the north.
On Taiwan, there are also conifers that are spread throughout North America; on the Pacific Coast there are limestone plants that came from far away; there are arctic plants that are relics of the Ice Age…Yu follows in the footsteps of Japanese-era entomologist Kano Tadao, to solve the riddle he left behind: “seeing the birds and butterflies of Taiwan inspires me to think of the Himalayas…the alpine island of Taiwan is really a prototype of the Himalayas, as if the creator had molded a small Himalaya mountains in the south seas.” Yu takes the reader on a journey into Taiwan’s deep mountains and waters, explains the origins of the plants that live there, and how they are literally related to the plants from the Hengduan Mountains on the Asian continent.
In this age of artificial intelligence, plants still need to be studied by trekking into the mountains in person, with a real life sword and pair of shoes. I am in admiration of Yu’s concluding thought: “the true face of Taiwan’s mountains is not Kano’s Himalayas or my Hengduan Mountains; it is not like the mountains of anywhere; Taiwan’s mountains are Taiwan’s mountains, they are who they are. Throughout the coming and going of glaciers, they welcome the travelers from afar, they nurture their own posterity, and create their one and only kind of history on this island.
The Plants That Go to the World–The Historical Journey of Taiwan’s High Mountain Plants provides a wealth of images, including historical photos as well as the works of two illustrators specializing in forestry. It is a book that is both scientific and poetic for the general audience.
Even though the plant world is vastly different from our world, upon closing the book I couldn’t help but make connections as a subjective reader—the people of Taiwan have the same story as the plants of Taiwan. Some originate here as Austronesians, some came over the Black Trench (the Taiwan Strait) to Taiwan, and some fled war to come here—no matter the origin, everyone has to create new progeny and create their own histories.
(Featured photo by Angela Hsiao)
