Yunnan, kingdom of flowers ruled by oaks
Last month I was in northern Yunnan - around Lijiang and Shangri-la (Zhongdian) - with a group of 20 (mostly) plant enthusiasts, climbing (well, by bus and relatively gentle walking) to over 3600 metres above sea level in search of plants well known from our gardens in Australia as well as many I'd never seen before. I've posted these already on Instagram but I wanted to provide a little more background to some. Let's start with oaks, a family favourite over recent years ( Three Worlds Oak is due out in the UK on 1 September and should be in Australia by December...) and given this is the Northern Hemisphere there is almost always one growing in a nearby forest. (Also firs, spruces and other conifers but I could only see oaks...) In this case, the oaks are mostly tall forest trees once classified in a separate genus called Cyclobalanopsis and commonly called ring-cupped oaks, or stunted shrubs (rarely small trees) related to the holly/holm oaks of the Mediterranean. Oh,...
