Photo taken by researcher Hu Jun on Aug. 10, 2021 shows the leaves of Euonymus aquifolium in the wild.(Photo by Hu Jun/Xinhua)
CHENGDU, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- A critically endangered plant, known as Euonymus aquifolium, has been rediscovered in China, more than 110 years after it was first found in the country.
A team of Chinese scientists led by Hu Jun found the plant in a canyon during the country's second scientific expedition to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in 2021.
In 1908, British botanist Ernest Henry Wilson first collected three specimens of the rare plant in southwestern China's Sichuan Province.
Since then, though, no one had ever spotted it again until August 2021, when Hu and his team found about 15 suspected plants of Euonymus aquifolium on the cliff of a canyon near Mount Gongga.
"I was very lucky. Some experts have been looking for it for more than a decade but to no avail," said Hu, an assistant researcher at Chengdu Institute of Biology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Upon finding the plant, the researchers made careful observation of its key features, such as the sepals, petals and stamens, and drew scientific drawings. Back at the lab, they conducted molecular experiments on the samples, before confirming that it was the Euonymus aquifolium plant.
The findings have been published in PhytoKeys, an international botanic journal.
The plant is listed as a critically endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.
"Every species is a magical creation of nature," Hu said, adding that his current task is to collect more seeds of the plant for the seed bank and artificial cultivation. ■
