PHYTOGEOGRAPHICAL Tsun-shen Ying,2 David E. Boufford,3RELATIONSHIPS OF THE and Yuling Tu4GENERA OF ANGIOSPERMSIN THE FANJING SHANMOUNTAIN RANGE,NORTHEASTERN GUIZHOU,CHINA'ABSTRACT The Fanjing Shan mountain range, one of six Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Preserves in China, covers anarea of ca. 567 km2 in northeastern Guizhou Province, China. The flora comprises ca. 1,400 species of floweringplants in 636 genera, 23 of which are endemic to China or barely extend into bordering areas. The importance ofthe 20 largest families, which together contain more than half of the total species, is evaluated, and the phytogeographicalaffinities of the genera of angiosperms in the flora are analyzed and briefly discussed. In the Fanjing Shan region,tropical and temperate genera are nearly equally represented. The distributional patterns of the genera are analyzed,and some comparisons are made with eight other major mountain regions in south-central and southern China thatalso contain rich floras of phytogeographical significance. Fanjing Shan is most similar floristically to the Wuyi Shan,Jinfo Shan, and Shennongjia regions, areas to the north and east, than it is to any of the others, which, except forone, are located to the south and west. Besides the tropical and temperate components of the flora, the Fanjing Shanregion also contains a rich representation of both Sino-Himalayan and Sino-Japanese elements. China is particularly rich in numbers of plantspecies. The estimated 29,000 species of floweringplants and ferns within the country, including about7,500 indigenous trees and shrubs (Pei, 1984),represent approximately 8-12% of ail vascularplants known worldwide. Part of the richness canbe accounted for by the diverse geology, complexclimatic patterns, and broad altitudinal and lati-tudinal ranges. Elevational differences in Chinaspan more than 9,000 m from the summit of Qomo-langma Feng (Mt. Everest) on the border withNepal at 8,848 m above sea level to 154 m belowsea level in the Turpan Depression in the XinjiangUygur Autonomous Region. China also occupiesthe only place on earth where an unbroken tran-sition of vegetational types exists, ranging from trop-ical rainforests in the south through subtropical,temperate, and boreal forests, to tundra and alpinevegetation in China's southwest and north. Thisvegetational continuum has resulted in associationsof plants not seen in other parts of the world andincludes taxa with diverse and widespread phyto-geographical relationships extending around theworld. Many of the plants in these associations, ortheir ancestors, are among those considered to havehad a much wider distribution during the Tertiary.Fieldwork in the Fanjing Shan mountain range innortheastern Guizhou by Chinese and Americanbotanists in 1986, and fieldwork in other mountainranges throughout China by Ying and his collab-We thank our colleagues, Bruce Bartholomew, Qianhai Chen, Sizhao Fang, Jingen Qi, Stephan A. Spongberg,Zhanhuo Tsi, Peishan Wang, and Yinghai Xiang, who accompanied us in the field in northeastern Guizhou in 1986,and Ying-chien Chien, Yenfeng Fu, Weilian Huang, and Xianpu Wang for logistic arrangements prior to our fieldwork.We are particularly grateful to the National Geographic Society, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academy ofSciences of Guizhou, and the Institute of Botany, Beijing, for generous financial support. The local government officialsof Tongren District, Jiangkou Xian, Yinjiang Xian, and Songtao Xian aided us in many ways and deserve specialthanks for their efforts and hospitality. We are also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments anduseful information. 2 Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 141 Xizhimenwai Dajie, Beijing, People's Republic of China. Harvard University Herbaria, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, U.S.A. 4 Department of Geography, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, Guizhou, People's Republic of China.ANN. MISSOURI BOT. GARD. 78: 338-358. 1991.
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