The Keelung City Government and the Wild Bird Society of Keelung are aiming to restore the Lysimachia candida, a species thought to be extinct since the early 1900s, at an ecological pool near Keelung’s Nuannuan District (暖暖).
The last time the plant was officially recorded was in 1897 by Japanese naturalist Seikihiro Yano.
Considered extinct by the Red List of Vascular Plants of Taiwan report, the plant was last month discovered by a plant enthusiast surnamed Su (蘇).
Photo provided by the Wild Bird Society of Keelung
Su said that she found the plant growing on a grassy slope, and sent a photograph to other enthusiasts because she had never seen it before.
Chung Shih-wen (鐘詩文), an expert at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, and Yang Tsung-yu (楊宗愈), a researcher at the National Museum of Natural Science, visited the ecological pool and identified the plant as Lysimachia candida.
The plant has flourished, with three to four clusters within a range of 100m, the experts said, adding that they surmised the clusters have been growing for about three to five years.
Society director Shen Chin-feng (沈錦豐) on Friday said that the city government should be credited for the rediscovery of the plant, as it had used lawn mowers and not herbicides to maintain the grass near the ecological pool.
The plant is facing the sun and is not covered by trees, meaning that given time, its survival is almost guaranteed, Shen said.
The society would be keeping the plant’s location a secret for now, Shen said, urging others who know about the discovery to also keep quiet to increase the chances that the plant will survive.
Shen also called on plant enthusiasts not to remove the plant from its habitat and to allow it to flourish and grow.
The plant usually develops fruit between March and July, the city government said, adding that it had agreed to collaborate with the society.
The society would be tasked with collecting the seeds of the plant while the city government would nurture the plants, it said.
COSTLY TECH FAILURE: More than 25,000 files for nearly 8,000 students from 81 schools were lost when system administrators updated a server, the Ministry of Education said The academic records of 7,854 high-school students have been lost due to a hard-drive failure, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The records were being stored at National Chi Nan University, which was commissioned by the ministry’s K-12 Education Administration to host a computer server of student portfolios that universities could access to evaluate their applications. Under a program introduced in 2019 for high-school students starting that year, students are to create portfolios to be used for university applications, which include their grades, extracurricular activities and other information related to their character and achievements. System administrators discovered that files were missing when rebooting
921 EARTHQUAKE: The magnitude 7.3 quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged The Central Weather Bureau yesterday received about 50,000 views on Facebook after it posted the data that it collected on Sept. 21, 1999, when the nation was devastated by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. The data showed that the 921 Earthquake hit the nation at 1:47am, with the epicenter being 7km southwest of the bureau’s quake detection center in Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池) at a depth of 8km. The quake left 2,456 people dead and 10,718 injured, while 53,661 houses were fully destroyed and 53,024 houses damaged, with the cost of the damage estimated at NT$300 billion (US$10.8 billion at the current
British newspaper The Mail on Sunday reported that Prince Charles met with Bruno Wang (汪家興), a Taiwanese fugitive who describes himself as a Chinese philanthropist and donated ￡500,000 (US$683,522) to the prince’s charity, the Prince’s Foundation. The newspaper reported that Wang is wanted in Taiwan on charges related to money laundering and being a fugitive from justice, allegations he denies, and drew comparisons between Wang and the Russian banker Dmitry Leus. Investigation and cooperation with foreign authorities have found that Bruno Wang’s father, Andrew Wang (汪傳浦), had stashed proceeds from a scandal involving the procurement of Lafayette frigates in 61 bank accounts,
AT ODDS: The KMT called on the government to seek bilateral dialogue with Beijing to resolve the issue that led to the ban on custard apple and wax apple imports Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials and lawmakers yesterday condemned China’s sudden ban on imports of custard apples and wax apples from Taiwan as “obvious political retaliation,” while the opposition called for a scientific investigation into Beijing’s claim to have found pests in imports of the fruits. China earlier yesterday announced a ban on the importation of the two fruits from today, citing repeated discoveries of Planococcus minor, a type of mealybug. The announcement follows a similar ban on Taiwanese pineapples imposed in February. At least Beijing gave a few days’ notice when it banned pineapple imports, an unnamed government official said yesterday. This time
RSS