By Gao Xinfen

Panzhihua, a very beautiful city, is situated in the southwest of Sichuan Province near Yunnan. It's quite an important industrial city for mineral resources in China,and also a very nice inhabitancy for various plants. The city has two counties under its administration, Yan Bian and Mi Yi. The topography of Panzhihua is higher of the Northwest and lower of the Southeast. The northwestern area has the Laverock Mountains where Yan Bian and Yan Yuan march with each other. The famous Jinsha river and Yalong river meet in the city. The most remote countryside is Ze Mulong of Yan Bian county, which is fully 186km from the downtown area. The highest peak in Panzhihua with its top 4195m above the sea level is located in the Laverock Mountains to the north of the local government. Our research started at this remote and hardy place.

We have been carrying out an investigation into the city's biological resources for some time, and I had gone for a field review in the last autumn. In order to research those plants blossoming in the early spring, I went there once again this year, my partners and I actually gained much information.

1. Rhododendrons in Yian Bian County

The most important species of plant in this investigation is the rhododendron. In the past, our researches were usuallyduring June and September every year, but only few azaleas can be seen at that time. Ealier in the spring time, the months of April and May are the best time to observe them in good blossom, more than 10 kinds of rhododendron are blooming.The azalea is called Suoma flower in Yi language (Yi is a minority people in Southwestern China) and their species vary obviously as the altitude changes. From the altitude of 1900m to 2350m, there are many fruticose rhododendron 0.5m to 2m tall- firecracker-flower (Rhododendron spinuliferum Franch.)and bright-hair azalea (R. microphytum Franch.) The former one distributes widely among the droughty shrubs or shaws.Clusters of fiery-red tubular flowers are upstanding on the top of the branches. The flower's yellow androecium slightly reaches out of the corolla, and this flower has the shortest lobes of corolla among all the rhododendron. It was the late time of its florescence in the dry season, so the branches and leaves of this plant seemed rather kraurotic and the flowers looked withered, some of them even seared before blossoming.

R. microphytum Franch. distributes in the humid bushes on the hillsides along the streams from the altitude 1800m to 2200m. The pink flowers were tenuous and veryelegant, they joggled in the gentle breeze like the graceful dancing girls performing in the acient emperor's palace, it strongly aroused human's tender affection. From 2200m to 2300m above the sea level, another kind of rhododendron with big flowers was R. delavayi Franch., but its florescence had past one week before, only the tiny fruits can be seen.

In the elevation from 2400m to 2500m, there were two kinds of rhododendron with small flowers and branches,growing in the bushes or by the side of grassplots. One of them is R. racemosum Franch., but the other one is nameless! It is similar to R. microphytum Franch. to some extent, but the latter one has 5 androeciums without a gland in the bract of flower. This kind of azalea has a gland excreting mucilage and has 8-10 androeciums, but it is not so elegant as the R. microphytum Franch.. We named this new kind as gland-bract azalea (R.adenobractum X.F.Gao et Y.L.Peng)on the basis of its own character.
Dew azalea (R. irroratum Franch.)with white flowers lives in the area from about 2380m to 2700m of altitude, occasionally some beautiful flowers can be found bloomy on the plants which were no taller than one meter.

From the altitude 2700m to 3100m, there were more and more kinds and amount of rhododendron which made our eyes dazed. The lovely flowers have many colours:white, yellowy, mauve and purple;and the backsides of the leaves changed from being glabrous to hairy and squamose. All the different rhododendron blossomed during almost the same time period, so it was really a spectacular scenery of a vast flowers' ocean.

Rhododendron is a sort of plant in fond of sunshine,they struggle hard to grow upward in the thick evergreen broadleaf forest. So all of them are thin and tall, with the flowers reaching out of the top and facing towards the sun.Those grow in the azalea forest, bushes and thin lawn where the rhododendron are the dominant species, are usually only one or two meters in height. R. rex Levl.subsp, fictolacteum (Balf.f.) Chamb- a kind of very big arboreal rhododendron, grows quite well above the altitue of 3200m, and it looked pretty grand. At that time the R.decorum Franch. were still in bud in the Laverock Mountains and the Green Mountain in Ze Mulong village.

It came to the beginning of May when we had finished the research in the Laverock Mountains and Green Mountain and transferred to Yan Kou village. The species of the rhododendron were a bit different from those in Ze Mulong village. From the altitude of 2700m to 3000m, there were mainly R. yunanense Franch., R. decorum Franch., R. rex Levl.subsp, fictolacteum(Balf.f.) Chamb., R. rubiginosum Franch., R.siderophyllum Franch., R. rigidum Franch., R. racemosum Franch., R.nitidulum Franch., Rhododendron spinuliferum Franch., R. microphytum Granch, R. scabrifolium Franch. and R. delavayi Franch. living in the Yunnan pines and the shaws had been withered.

The living environment of R. decorum Franch. that grow in Yan Kou village is lower than that in Ze Mulong(3000m-3100m of altitude). At that time, R. decorum Franch. just started to bloom. R. racemosum Franch. as the secondary dominant species has full-blown of pink or mauve flowers, and they constitute the low alpine bushes together with Pinus yunnanensis Franch. var. pygmaea (Hsueh), alpine oak all over the mountain. R.nitidulum Franch. growed in parts on the hills and their flowers were in dreamlike blue, and looked fabulous in the soft sunshine.