PREFACE

    Professor Wu Quanan is a botanist at the Kunming Institute of Botany, CAS(Chinese Academy of Science ). He has long been engaged in research into the floristic resources of Yunnan and the systematic introduction of the province's wild flowers into cultivation. He was one of the major contributors to the three comprehensive volumes of Plants of Yunnan. This was a joint Chinese-Japanese production in which the Chinese team consisted of Prof. Wu, myself, Yu Shaowen and Zhang Qitai while the Japanese collaborators were well-known botanists Hiroshi Hara and Shiro Kitamura and horticulturist Sho Tsuyama. It was published in Japanese Jointly by the Yunnan People's Publishing House in China and the Japanese Broadcasting Publishing Association. The text was translated by Hsu Chien-chang, a Japanese Chinese scholar of Taiwan origin. Because of the high production costs, it was not feasible to produce Chinese and English editions of Plants of Yunnan, thus limiting its circulation and usefulness. In view of this, Prof. Wu renewed his efforts in the following ten years and more, to investigate wild plants with ornamental flowers, fruits or foliage distributed from the tropical lowlands to the frigid alpine areas of Yunnan. He has taken more than 1000 photos, and from among these over 500 have been selected and presented in Wild Flowers of Yunnan in China. The 475 species and infraspecific taxa included here, from 237 genera and 89 families, represent the main wild flower and plant resources of Yunnan. The text accompanying the colour photos gives the Latin name and a description of morphology, geographical distribution, habitat, altitude, and ornamental and other uses. While a wide range of taxa has been covered, emphasis has been given to the tropical Orchidaceae, Zingiberaccae, Caesalpiniaceae, Papilionaceae and Apocynaccae, the subtropical Magnoliaceae, Melastomataceae, Ericaceae, Theaceae, Rosaceae and Ranunculaceae, and the well-known flowers of the temperate and frigid alpine Rhododendron, Primula, Pedicularis, Meconopsis, Lilium and Nomocharis of Yunnan. The comprehensive yet selective nature of its content, the authoritative identification of the taxa and the detailed information on their range of occurrence and ecological conditions rank this book high among similar colour- illustrated publications produced in recent years. It is with great pleasure that 1 have written the preface for this book.