A rare floating island composed of vegetation in Yilan County shifted hundreds of meters in the most recent typhoon, surprising plant-life conservationists, who said they have never observed such movement from the island.
At a lake in the county’s Shuanglianpi (雙連埤) area, the smallest island — one of three that are the nation’s only natural floating islands — moved 200m across the entire width of the lake during September’s Typhoon Megi, a member of the Society of Wilderness said, adding that the 0.5 hectare island is a protected wetland.
“I never imagined that the island could move,” the member said, adding that fellow society members were both shocked and excited by the development.
Photo: Chien Hui-ju, Taipei Times
Society habitat protection expert Chuang Yu-wei (莊育偉) on Friday said that one of the two larger islands was reportedly seen moving between 2005 and 2006, adding that the most recent movement is remarkable because of its distance.
Chuang said locals refer to the islands as a family, calling the smallest island the child and the two larger islands its parents. The way the small island floated toward the two larger islands on the other side of the lake is reminiscent of a child returning to the embrace of its parents, Chuang said.
This image is accentuated by the fact that the small island emerged after the largest island split during a typhoon in 2013, he said.
Chuang said that the formation of a natural floating island takes up to 500 years.
He said the islands form from turf on a lake’s coastline growing into the water and eventually breaking off, usually due to powerful winds.
It takes many years for the growth of the island to stabilize, he added.
“A natural floating island is completely made up of vegetation, with its surface comprising of grass, bushes, trees and ferns that become interwoven,” Chuang said, adding that the strong typhoon winds caused the formation’s root system to break free from the lake floor and push it across the lake’s surface.
Chuang said that every movement of a floating island creates a new environment for plant life in a lake, adding that this is one of the reasons why Shuanglianpi lake is a “kingdom of water-borne plant life.”
The lake houses more than 80 species of plant life indigenous to Taiwan.
“Seeing such plants as the Rhynchospora malasica and the Salix kusanoi at 500m above sea level is rare in itself,” Chuang said.
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