I don't know if you have heard of the name "plant hunter". It is a low-key and mysterious profession, which originated in Europe and flourished in Britain. Their task is to collect exotic flowers and herbs.
Professor Zhong Yang, a botanist at Fudan University, traveled all over Tibet in 16 years, climbed a mountain more than 6000 meters above sea level and collected more than 40 million seeds of 1000 plants.
There is no doubt that Professor Zhong is a seed hunter.
Seeds are of great significance to botanists.
One gene can save a country, and one seed can benefit thousands of people.
Due to global warming, the growing environment of plants will change greatly, some plants may mutate and some plants may disappear from the earth.
How will the disappearance of a plant species affect human beings?
Professor Zhong Yang made an interesting analogy. Suppose a hundred years later, people find that some plants have indispensable ingredients to conquer cancer. It would be a pity if this plant disappeared.
So, collect these seeds before biodiversity changes or species are endangered. Collected in the seed bank, perhaps decades or even hundreds of years later, these seeds will play its role, so that this disappeared species will return to the earth and glow with new vitality.
There are more than 6,000 species of higher plants in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, among which 1000 species are endemic to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Professor Zhong Yang is keenly aware that Tibet is a rare treasure of biodiversity.
So he went to Tibet, a high-altitude area, without hesitation and began to collect seeds.
In this sense, Professor Zhong Yang is more like a philosopher than a botanist.
Novalis, a German romantic poet, said that philosophy is always looking for homes with an impulse of homesickness.
Professor Zhong Yang, with such homesickness, is looking for the home of mankind, looking for the home of mankind hundreds or even thousands of years later.
What a broad mind and feelings this is!
Professor Zhong Yang is a genius who graduated from the junior class of the University of Science and Technology of China. After graduation, he was assigned to the Institute of Botany of Wuhan University as a computer talent.
Maybe it's the call of fate. He was just studying cold data, but in fact he became interested in plants.
The ancient lotus seeds buried underground for thousands of years, after careful cultivation by botanists, actually glow with new vitality and grow a pool of lotus flowers.
This, for Zhong Yang, has a fatal attraction. He deeply felt the greatness of life and the charm of plants. He knows that behind a string of cold data is a fresh life.
From then on, he plunged into the field of botany, and was inspired by plants on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and went to Tibet thousands of miles away to study and collect plateau seeds.
How many bell-shaped flowers are there in the world? Only the proud Tibetan pineapple blooms among the mountains and gravel.
This is a favorite Tibetan poem translated by Zhong Yang himself.
In order to collect the seeds of Tibet pineapple, he climbed a mountain of more than 4500 meters. Because of severe hypoxia, black lips and shortness of breath. However, the bright and tenacious life of this kind of Tibetan pineapple, which grows among high mountains and gravel, immediately made him forget all kinds of physical discomfort.
He sighed and couldn't help reciting this little poem over and over again.
In order to find the seeds of cedar, he led his students to the Yarlung Zangbo River and registered more than 30,000 kinds of giant cypresses in the world.
They found a unique plant in Tibetan area, Mountain hare, which has high scientific research value, over 6000 meters (the pole of human sampling).
After decades of tracking, they finally found the mouse Arabidopsis thaliana, which grows in the plant kingdom at an altitude of more than 4000 meters.
……
In the process of searching for seeds, he waded through mountains and rivers again and again, and suffered altitude sickness again and again, but he was determined.
Because although he is a botanist, he has poetic sensitivity and enthusiasm. Like a poet, he has been pursuing his dreams.
Any life will come to an end one day, but I am not afraid, because my students will continue the road of scientific exploration. The seeds we collected may take root and sprout one day hundreds of years later, and I don't know how many people's dreams will be realized by then.
In each of these sixteen years, Professor Zhong spent most of his time in Tibet.
He is well aware that the plan of collecting seeds and establishing a seed gene bank for the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau cannot be completed by one person or one generation.
Therefore, in Tibet, in addition to scientific research, training talents has also become the focus of his work.
He mobilized young teachers from Tibet University to apply for doctoral students from Fudan University, and trained a number of doctoral students and master students.
He helped the School of Science of Tibet University successfully apply for the first national natural science foundation project of Tibet University. He also helped Tibet University to apply for the first doctor's degree in ecology, trained the first doctor's degree in Tibetan botany, and brought out the first innovative team of the Ministry of Biological Education in Tibet, which not only filled many gaps in the field of higher education in Tibet, but also successfully pushed the biodiversity research of Tibet University to the world.
Professor Zhong, 53, is in his prime. He wants to contribute to the seed industry and education in Tibet for another ten years, or even longer. ...
However, contrary to expectations, Professor Zhong's life was fixed on September 25, 20 17, and he had a car accident in Inner Mongolia.
Now, his students, or young colleagues, have taken over his career and continue on the road of dreams.
The world is bustling for profit, and the world is bustling for profit.
In this world, there are many people who are obsessed with fame and fortune, but a few people, like Professor Zhong, don't care about fame and fortune, just live for their dreams and worry about the future of mankind.
On this sad Qingming day, let's remember this great soul-Professor Zhong Yang, the seed hunter!
Qi's essay-writing activities in the middle of the year.
Article 53 of the 22nd Annual Camp, 1896, accounting for 85,467 words.