A flower species depicted on the NT$1,000 banknote that is commonly believed to be a Yushan thistle is actually a newly discovered species of Cirsium, academics said on Saturday.
Chang Chih-yi (張之毅), a doctoral candidate at National Chung Hsing University’s forestry department, said that the flower is a Cirsium tatakaense — a species endemic to south-central Taiwan that he and his team discovered.
Chang and his supervisor, associate professor Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學), published their findings after five years of research in the international academic journal PhytoKeys on Feb. 14.
Photo courtesy of National Chung Hsing University
The Cirsium tatakaense, which grows in the Tataka area (塔塔加) in Yushan National Park and is often photographed by visitors, can easily be mistaken for the similar-looking Yushan thistle, the two men said.
The flower has yet to be seen outside of the park at altitudes of 2,000m to 3,000m above sea level, they said.
The best place to see the flower is in open areas along the roads near the Tataka Visitor Center, they said, adding that it is in season from August to October.
Photo courtesy of National Chung Hsing University
The flower’s leaves are more slender than those of the Yushan thistle and it has more petals, they said.
The Cirsium tatakaense has a thornier and longer stem, which is easily distinguishable from that of the Yushan thistle, and its petals are white, droop when in bloom and have sharp toothpick-like thorns surrounding their base, they said.
The researchers also examined pollen samples from the two plants and found that the Cirsium tatakaense has much larger grains of pollen.
Although the number of Cirsium tatakaense is low, there is little danger of the plant becoming extinct, as the remoteness and high elevation of its habitat means it is protected from human activity, Chang and Tseng said.
However, climate change could affect the flower’s growth, so efforts should be made to conserve the plant, the academics said.
Fast food chain McDonald's is to raise prices by up to NT$5 on some products at its restaurants across Taiwan, starting on Wednesday next week, the company announced today. The prices of all extra value meals and sharing boxes are to increase by NT$5, while breakfast combos and creamy corn soup would go up by NT$3, the company said in a statement. The price of the main items of those meals, if ordered individually, would remain the same. Meanwhile, the price of a medium-sized lemon iced tea and hot cappuccino would rise by NT$3, extra dipping sauces for chicken nuggets would go up
Yangmingshan National Park’s Qingtiangang (擎天崗) nature area has gone viral after a park livestream camera observed a couple in the throes of intimate congress, which was broadcast live on YouTube, drawing large late-night crowds and sparking a backlash over noise, bright lights and disruption to wildlife habitat. The area’s livestream footage appeared to show a couple engaging in sexual activity on a picnic table in the park on Friday last week, with the uncensored footage streamed publicly online. The footage quickly spread across social media, prompting a tide of visitors to travel to the site to “check in” and recreate the
Minister of Digital Affairs Lin Yi-ching (林宜敬) yesterday cited regulatory issues and national security concerns as an expert said that Taiwan is among the few Asian regions without Starlink. Lin made the remarks on Facebook after funP Innovation Group chief executive officer Nathan Chiu (邱繼弘) on Friday said Taiwan and four other countries in Asia — China, North Korea, Afghanistan and Syria — have no access to Starlink. Starlink has become available in 166 countries worldwide, including Ukraine, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, in the six years since it became commercial, he said. While China and North Korea block Starlink, Syria is not
GROUNDED: A KMT lawmaker proposed eliminating drone development programs and freezing funding for counterdrone systems, despite China’s adoption of the technology China has deployed attack drones at air bases near the Taiwan Strait in a strategy aimed at overwhelming Taiwan’s air defense systems through saturation attacks, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. The council’s latest quarterly report on China said that satellite imagery and open-source intelligence indicate that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) had converted retired J-6 fighter jets into J-6W drones, which the PLA has stationed at six air bases near Taiwan, five in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province. The report cited J. Michael Dahm, a senior fellow at the US-based Mitchell Institute, as saying that China has
RSS