Chapter 45 "Flora of Hong Kong"

The Flora of Hong Kong by George Ben-tham (George Ben-tham: "Flora Hong Kongensis").Published in London in 1861, price unknown at the time.This article has 482 pages, plus 52 pages of preface and table of contents, described in Mullendorff's "Summary of Chinese Bibliography", numbered 1771. This Hong Kong Flora, published more than one hundred years ago, is not only the earliest, but also the most detailed one.It is a pity that it has been out of print for a long time, and this book is no longer found on the shelves of ordinary libraries. This book contains a total of 1,056 species of flowers and trees growing in Hong Kong.It is cataloged separately according to the species, and the place where the specimen was found, the surname of the collector, and the comparison between this product and similar items found in other regions are indicated one by one.It seems that the purpose of this book is not for ordinary people to read. All the scientific names are in Latin and there are no illustrations. Therefore, except for those who specialize in botany, ordinary people will feel very boring about this flora.

Benson has a preface of nearly twenty pages at the beginning of the volume, explaining the source of the material on which his flora is based, and the botanical aspects of various parts of China and Hong Kong before he embarked on the compilation of this book. contribution made.He said that before Hong Kong Island became a British colony, most of the plant specimens collected by European navigators and travelers in this area were brought back to their home countries by sea via Guangzhou and Macau.The scope of collection at that time was about Lantau Island and the islands near Kap Shui Mun, because the ships from Europe at that time, if they did not sail into Huangpu, they would be anchored in the old Wanshan Islands, so the scope of their collection of plant specimens may have been including Hong Kong Island.

Of course, this was the situation before 1841.At the beginning of 1841, the navy and army sent by the United Kingdom to South China to protect trade formally occupied Hong Kong Island under the orders of Elliot, the commercial supervisor in China.In terms of botany, the official collection of Hong Kong plant specimens began at this time.At that time, the British naval survey ship sent to transport troops to land on Hong Kong Island had a naval doctor named Richard Xings on board, an amateur botanist.He landed on Hong Kong Island with the first batch of personnel from the British Navy and Army, and immediately started collecting plant specimens on the island.He thus became the first European to formally collect plant specimens on the island.He lived in Hong Kong for several weeks in the winter of this year, and brought back by ship the specimens of Hong Kong plants that he had already collected, a total of 140 species.

In addition to Richard Xings, Benson said that there were two other Europeans who were famous for studying Hong Kong plants in the early years, one was Zhang Bian and the other was Hans.Zhang Bian was a soldier. He was sent to Hong Kong in 1847, where he was stationed for three years, collecting plant specimens all over the island in his spare time.When he was transferred back to China in 1850, he carried nearly 600 species of Hong Kong plant specimens in his luggage. Henry Hans is an Englishman, born in 1827. He came to Hong Kong to work in 1844. He was only 17 years old at the time. He was a clerk of the Hong Kong government. Commercial supervisor, worked under the command of the British Foreign Office. Since 1861, he was changed to the British vice-consul in Huangpu Port. He held this position for 25 years.In 1886, he was officially appointed as the British Consul in Xiamen, but he died within a month of taking office.

Hans's life can be said to have been spent in various places in South China.He lived in both Hong Kong and Guangzhou, lived in Huangpu longer, and traveled to Hainan Island and various places in Guangdong.He is an amateur botanist, and he goes out to collect plant specimens when he is free.During his tenure in Huangpu, in addition to studying local plants, British merchants and priests in other treaty ports in my country sent him plant specimens collected by him for his research and identification.Therefore, when he passed away, the number of plant specimens left behind was very impressive, with a total of 22,437 species.These were donated to the British Museum in London.

There are many kinds of plant specimens discovered by Hans in China for the first time, all of which are named after him. Hans published many botanical papers and reports.According to the statistics of Blichnett's "A Brief History of Plants Discovered by Europeans in China", Hans wrote a total of 222 papers and reports. Before Benson's "Flora of Hong Kong" was published, he had written a paper on the study of the flora of Hong Kong.Benson stated in the preface to "Flora of Hong Kong" that his own flora was compiled based on the materials collected by Hans and others.

Later, in 1871, Hans wrote a supplement to Benson's "Flora of Hong Kong" based on the information he continued to obtain, see Mullendorff's "Chinese Bibliographic Abstract", numbered Number one seven ninety-five. In his book, Benson made a comparative study of the plants produced in Hong Kong and those produced in other nearby regions, and classified them into seven categories according to their geographical distribution.He said that the location of Hong Kong Island, in terms of the distribution line of plant classification, is the end point of the northern part of mainland China on the one hand, and the starting point of the tropical south on the other hand, so a wide range of plant species can be collected.Some plants that grow from northern Siberia to southern Africa and South America can find their counterparts in Hong Kong.As for the nearby India, places in Southeast Asia and Japan, these places are closely related to Hong Kong Island in terms of plant distribution, let alone.

Benson's "Flora of Hong Kong" is an old work published more than a hundred years ago, but it is not only the first Hong Kong flora, but so far no one else has written a work of the same kind on a comparable scale.As for the collection of plant specimens in Hong Kong, some people have been going on.According to a related article in the Hong Kong Government Annual Report in 1967, there are now more than 30,000 species of plant specimens collected by Hong Kong gardens over the years.