This year, Kunming Institute of Botany of CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences) will bring the 16th Public Science Day online, and citizens could “visit” the institute via live streams launched by scientific researchers working there between 9:30 and 11:30 on May 24. This live stream consists of four interesting and meaningful topics:   

Topic 1: Explore the Fuli Palace

The first greenhouse with written records in the world is Fuli palace, which was built by the Martial emperor of the Han dynasty to preserve exotic flowers and fruits from the south. Therefore, Wu Zhengyi, a famous botanist in China, named the greenhouses in Kunming Botanical Garden of Kunming Institute of Botany Fuli palace. 

The live streaming will take audiences to explore the Fuli palace in Kunming Botanical Garden, and the viewers will be lucky to see exotic plants in tropical or subtropical forests, such as strangler, antiaris toxicaria, rubber tree, bodhi tree and asak. 

Peonies (Painted by Zeng Xiaolian)

Topic 2: Draw a botanical illustration

Botanical scientific illustration is an art developed along with herbalism and plant taxonomy. Before the invention of photography, it was the most convenient and intuitive way for people to identify plants and played an important role in promoting the early development of botany, especially plant taxonomy.

Today, the role of botanical scientific illustrations in plant science has declined, and they are reserved only in botanical books or taxonomic journals as an aid to the textual description of plant form. 

On May 24, some botanical scientific illustrations will be showed on display boards. In addition, Kunming Institute of Botany will invite children to come to the site and listen to masters’ lectures about botanical scientific illustration. After that, children could learn and feel this art with the help of masters. Children aged 7 to 12 could email necessary materials to 273442455@qq.com to register, and 20 lucky juveniles are going to get the letter of invitation. 

Topic 3: Make internet-famous food

In this part, a live streaming will make internet-famous tea which can change colors during the process. Learning something about exotic spices hidden in the folk and different kinds of simple but delicious Yunnan ingredients is also possible for the enthusiastic audience.

Topic 4: Visit Southwest China Germplasm Bank of Wildlife

By the end of 2019, a total of 10,285 species and 82,746 portions of seeds had been collected and preserved in Southwest China Germplasm Bank of Wildlife, accounting for 35.2% of the total number of China, belonging to 230 families and 2044 genera. Here, corn can be preserved for 460 years, wheat for 786 years, rice for 1139 years, and cotton for 17076 years. 

During the live streaming, a staff of Kunming Institute of Botany will show followers how many siftings a seed has to go through before entering the -20℃ underground cold storage. 

This live streaming also sets up a Q&A session, in which audiences could answer questions asked by the staff, and will be awarded with small delicate souvenirs.

Click here to view Chinese report

(Editors: Alison, Christine)