Alex Bernhard & Rolf Rutishauser & Severin Bühlmann
China is a huge country. It is 240 times the size of Switzerland and has 180 times as many inhabitants. Today, China is primarily known as an export country for many inexpensive, but increasingly also high-quality or even unique consumer goods that we all need for our happiness. The present "Letter to the Friends of the Botanic Garden" is intended to remind us that China has supplied the rest of the world not only with silk and the rest of the world valuable plants, not only bamboo. only bamboo.
The map lists some of the ornamental and useful plants known to us, which came to us from China by different routes and at different times:
Peaches and lemons, for example, were probably already travelling along the the Silk Roads to the Near East and Europe. The peach was then peach was then wrongly assumed to come from Persia, but this was only one of the last one of the last stops on the Silk Road from China to the West. West. Many of the citrus plants cultivated today in the Mediterranean region and elsewhere citrus plants (including orange = China apple (orange = apple + sina) and mandarin) originate from China!
Other Chinese trees such as ginkgo (ginkgo) and emperor tree = bluebell tree (paulownia) were first cultivated as park trees by the Japanese and only came to the West from there. The ginkgo reached Europe in time to inspire Goethe as a vigorous tree in Jena.
Ginkgo tree in front of the house, together with the boring neophyte cherry laurel and the ecologically less valuable thuja hedge.
Paulownia in Carona, Tessin
A real export boom in Chinese ornamental plants began with the collecting trips of plant hunters such as Robert Fortune and Ernest H. Wilson in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They also travelled to more remote areas of China on behalf of European and North American nurseries. We owe many rhododendrons and azaleas (both of the genus Rhododendron), as well as numerous primroses and other ornamental plants such as wisteria, weigela and dicentra not only to the collecting activities of these plant hunters, but also to the openness of the Chinese emperors of the time, who allowed these plant hunters into their country.
Wisteria (popularly known in Switzerland as wisteria or wisteria, sometimes a little confusing, as the botanical name of the soya bean is Glycine max) purple and white in Carona, Ticino.
Rhododendron und Azaleen im Parco San Grato, Carona, Tessin
Kolkwitzia amabilis = Perlmuttstrauch (Parco San Grato, Carona, Tessin)
Herzblume (Dicentra spectabilis) im Schrebergarten in Olten
The next time you eat a delicious kiwi fruit, you should also remember that enterprising New Zealanders imported the originally Chinese plant (Actinidia chinensis, A. deliciosa) into their country and began cultivating it in plantations there. This only happened a good hundred years ago!
Kiwi, Carona, Tessin
The years in which some plants were introduced to Europe are indicated on the map of China. For example, the tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) was introduced to Europe as early as 1751, while the summer lilac or butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) was not introduced until 1889. Today, both have gone wild in many places in Europe.
We are proud that the Chinese tulip tree (Liriodendron chinense) and the cone nut (Platycarya strobilacea), two trees that are otherwise rarely seen in parks and gardens, thrive in Zurich Botanical Garden.
Tulpenbaum
Phellodendron im TCM Garten Wädenswil
Woody plants that also thrived in Europe millions of years ago still live in China today. These include the genera ginkgo, the ancient sequoia (Metasequoia), the tulip tree (Liriodendron) and the cork tree (Phellodendron), which are only known in fossilised form in Europe. These became extinct during the ice ages at the latest. It was only with their re-importation from China that they enjoyed a "renaissance" here.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of other plants to describe that came to us from Asia or were brought to us. Just to finish off with the clematis as a representative of those not mentioned, because today of all days it has just blossomed for the first time this year in front of our house in Ticino:
Clematis vitalba is one of the many clematis species that are native to our region. It is also known as Niele, which we used to fetch as boys in the forest, break out the hollow, dry stems and smoke until we felt sick. Clematis species can be found all over the world. In China, various types of clematis are used in medicine, for example known as Wei Ling Xian or Mu Tong. The picture shows an ornamental species of clematis in Carona, Ticino.
Alex Bernhard & Rolf Rutishauser & Severin Bühlmann
Addendum: The ginkgo leaf also adorns this garden letter as the emblem of the Association of Friends of the Zurich Botanic Garden. You can become a member of this non-profit organisation for CHF 30 per year.
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