Seed collecting excursions to China and Japan

Timo Koponen

New Botanical Garden at the University of Helsinki

The Botanical Garden of the University of Helsinki was established in 1678 as a herbal garden of the Academy of Turku. The garden was moved to Helsinki in 1829 in connection with the establishment of the Imperial Alexander University. Czar Nikolai I then (in 1828) ordered that an area of Helsinki City public parkland was to be given to the University for its botanical garden.

The new garden was fully planted by 1833, and has been in Kaisaniemi since then. The 4-hectare garden, with its outdoor garden and greenhouses has been a remarkable resource for teaching botany not only in our University but in many other schools as well, such as the horticultural and art schools. The greenhouses are a popular tourist attraction with ca 17 000 visitors yearly.

In the early 1980's the University decided to build a new campus in the Kumpula area. From the very beginning it was clear that the Botanical Garden must be one of the first institutes there; trees grow slowly.

Kumpula has a good facility for the garden, the old Kumpula manor with its previously cultivated 6-hectare surroundings.

Planning of the new garden began in 1987, and basic construction was completed in 1994.

The garden has now a good laboratory, a library, and office facilities in an old restored building. A greenhouse was built for the propagation of plants for the new garden.

The new garden will include a garden of ornamental plants, a garden of economic plants and phytogeographic garden as well, where plants will be located and cultivated according to their original areas. These geographical sections will include collections of Japanese plants, of plants of the Far East, meaning the Russian Far East and Northeast China, collections from eastern and western North America, and a European collection.

All our plants in the phytogeographical sections will originate from their natural habitats. Part will come from international seed exchanges, and because seeds of some other plants, especially trees, are inadequately available, these will be obtained from a series of excursions.

Establishment of a new botanical garden is a rare event and also a challenging possibility to test and introduce new plants and varieties.

This is clear from the fact that our excursion to Japan was only the second excursion abroad to be arranged by our garden; the previous excursion was that of Peter Kalm to North America in 1748-1751!

Where to go for plant hunting?

We have adopted the bioclimatic zone system developed by Finnish phytogeographers (e.g. Kalela 1961, Ahti et al. 1968, Ahti 1980, Hämet-Ahti et al. 1974, Hämet-Ahti 1981) in estimating the potential collecting localities. Helsinki lies in the border area of hemiboreal and southern boreal bioclimatic vegetation zones and has a moderately oceanic climate. However, in winter very low temperatures (below - 30 °C) may occur (Table 1).

Table 1: The climatic parameters

The areas in Europe, East Asia and North America corresponding bioclimatically to South Finland are given in Fig. 2 [not available in this online version].

Excursion to Japan in 1993

For establishing the Japanese collection the Botanical Garden organized an excursion to Japan in 1993.

The host institution in Japan was the Botanical Garden, University of Hokkaido.

Altogether 8 persons participated the excursion (for details, see Koponen & Koponen 1994).

The excursion took place in September 4-29, 1993. Eight major areas (Fig. 3; not available in this online version) on Hokkaido Island were visited. Since our garden in Helsinki lies in the border area of hemiboreal and southern boreal bioclimatic vegetation zones, we tried to collect our material in Hokkaido from orohemiboreal and lower oroboreal zones.

Altogether we collected about 400 collections of seeds, seedlings and twigs for micropropagation. The life forms of plant species are given in Table 2 [not available in this online version]. We vere lucky to collect some rather large samples of seeds and could offer a limited amount of them as exchange (Koponen & Koponen 1994).

After the excursions the seeds were sown and placed outdoors to induce germination by natural cold treatment. Some of the Japanese seeds germinated in the spring of 1994, and the plants grew well. A total of 13 000 plants were produced, of which 49 woody plant species and 1 450 individual plants have already been planted in the Japanese section of the phytogeographic garden. In the spring of 1995 another set of seeds germinated, such as Viburnum.

Excursion to China in 1994

To establish the continental east asiatic collection, the Botanical Garden organized an excursion to China in 1994.

The host institution in China was the Arboretum of the Institute of Applied Ecology, Academia Sinica, Shenyang.

Altogether 11 persons participated in that excursion (for the details, see Koponen & Koponen 1995).

The excursion took place from August 26 to September 26, 1994.

Two major areas were visited, Mt. Changbai and the Baishilazhi Natural Reserve NE of Kuandian. Some collecting was done in a third locality in Chanchun City. A map (Fig. 3; not available in this online version) shows the location of collection areas.

A total of almost 330 collections of seeds and twigs for micropropagation were made. The life forms of plant species are given in the Table 2 [not available in this online version]. Some rather large samples of seeds were collected, of which a limited number could be offered in exchange.

The seeds brought from China germinated well in the spring of 1995 after the cold treatment. The first plants will be planted in the East Asiatic section of our new garden in the autumn of 1995.

Hardiness of the material

We expect the plants grown from our seed material collected in Japan to be hardy in corresponding zones in Europe and North America, especially in moderately oceanic areas (see e.g. the map in Hämet-Ahti et al. 1992, and Fig. 2 [not available in this online version]).

The material we have collected in China is probably very hardy against frost. It may be best suited to areas with a cold and long winter and rather short but warm summer. The relevant climatic parameters are given in Table 1 [not available in this online version]. For historical reasons provenances originating from Northeast China are rare in European and North American gardens. The east Asiatic plants in such gardens originate only mainly from Korea, Japan and the Russian Far East, with early "plant hunters" in China mostly travelling in the southern and southwestern provinces.

Bretschneider (1898) lists only ca 10 botanists visiting Northeast China. H. E. M. James in 1886 was the first foreigner to climb Mt. Changbai, and V. L. Komarov travelled in Northeast China in 1896 and 1897.

In addition to our expedition, the only other recent visitor in Changbei doing work related to garden plants is W. Herrmann (1993). The best source of information as to use of the Northeast Chinese flora in gardening is Woeikoff (1941). The Chinese Eastern Railway, which was constructed and controlled by Russians (1896-1935), had experimental farms and obviously carried out exchanges of plant material. According to Woeikoff (1941), "In European Russia most of these Manchurian plants which have been tested turned out to be hardy in the Vologda Government, in Petrograd (60° N. L.), and in Finland (62°). In Canada many of them have beautified gardens of Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, there, where not even ligneous plants of Europe nor from forests of East Canada grow. Several plants of the Manchurian flora were hardy even in cold table lands of the Irkutsk Government and adjoining the Baikal Lake."

Did we select the areas to visit correctly? We will know only after many years whether we were successful or not. In the best case the University of Helsinki will have a very rich garden deserving international comparison. For instance, the material from China included seeds of seven different species of birches and nine different species of maples. We brought back seeds of ca 90 Japanese and 70 Chinese woody plant species, which have not previously been tested in Finland.

At the very least, these have a better prognosis than those of our famous procedessor Peter Kalm. Only three of the plants (Crataegus grayana Eggleston, Parthenocissus inserta (A. Kerner) Fritsch, and Rubus odoratus L.) which he introduced from North America have survived in Finnish gardens to the present day. Kalm's failure was due to the fact that he did not have the necessary phytogeographical knowledge available. He travelled mostly in areas which were not bioclimatically correponding to southern Finland.

The new garden will be opened to the public in 2010. Welcome!

References

• Ahti, T. 1980: Definition and subdivision of the subarctic: A circumpolar view. - Canadian Bot. Ass. Bull. 13:2(Suppl.): 3-10.
• Ahti, T., Hämet-Ahti, L. & Jalas, J. 1968: Vegetation zones and their sections in northwestern Europe. - Ann. Bot. Fennici 5: 169-211.
• Bretschneider, E. 1898: History of European botanical discoveries in China. I, II. - v, 1167 p. Press of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg.
• Hämet-Ahti, L. 1981: The boreal zone and its biotic subdivision. - Fennia 159: 69-75.
• Hämet-Ahti, L. & Ahti, T. 1969: The homologies of the Fennoscandian mountain and coastal birch forests in Eurasia and North America. - Vegetatio 19: 208-219.
• Hämet-Ahti, L., Ahti, T. & Koponen, T. 1974: A scheme of vegetation zones for Japan and adjacent regions. - Ann. Bot. Fennici 11: 59-88.
• Herrmann, W. 1993: Botanisches aus der Heimat des Ginseng. - Gartenpraxis 1993(9): 50-55.
• Kalela, A. 1961: Waldvegetationzonen Finnlands und ihre klimatischen Paralleltypen. - Arch. Soc. Vanamo 16(Suppl.): 65-83.
• Koponen, T. & Koponen, A. 1994: Delectus seminum. List of seeds available in 1994. Supplement. Seeds from natural habitats in Hokkaido, Japan. - 15 p. Botanical Garden, University of Helsinki.
• Woeikoff, A. D. 1941: What can the Manchurian flora as well as the flora of neighbouring countries give to gardens of Manchuria itself and other countries with cold climates. - 134 + 6 p. Harbin.