Chinchilla gave acorns to her sister, and there are many forests in Taiwan! 45 Species of Fagaceae Family, Lin Huanqing's Affection

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It was not so much that he chose the tree as the tree chose him. Lin Min-ching shuttles through the forest path in Lianhuachi, Nantou, like an invisible rope pulling him up steeply. After more than five years of farming in Hualien, he returned to this haunted forest, and the one he used most was the tall "acorn family" that produced lovely fruit, that is, the Fagaceae trees.

It is not too much to say that we are haunted by dreams. Once, in order to photograph and record the flowers, fruits, and leaves of every Fagaceae tree, he searched all over Taiwan, but he often ran into a period of bumping into a wall. For example, his favorite "Nantou Stone Oak" pays attention to it all the time, but never sees it blossom. One night, a tree came to a dream and spoke to him calmly: "I have blossomed. If you don't come, it will be too late." Lin Siqing suddenly woke up with a start.

Speaking of this dream adventure, his tone was in awe. Lin Shih-ching regards himself as a servant of trees and only wants to faithfully convey the beauty of the forest. After ten years of sharpening a sword, his work, the Atlas of the Acorn Family in Taiwan, is resounding and praised by experts for reaching the international first-class standard in pictures and texts, with both knowledge and temperature, opening up a new example of natural atlas.

Lin Luoqing and the dream of Nantou Stone Oak (Photo / Cai Jiashan) Lianhuachi Forest is enlightening and becomes a vivid "tree man".

Has Nantou stone oak really blossomed? "I looked at it with binoculars the next day, but I couldn't find it. I wanted to say that dreams were deceitful. When I came back a week later, I found that there seemed to be protuberances next to the leaves. They were really flower buds! " Lin Shiqing said with a smile that later the trees were in full bloom and were a soft pink. "if you think about it, there is a sense of disobedience when such a big tree gives you pink." Today, he went back to the dream tree and asked me to take a picture like an old friend reunited.

Lin Miqing describes trees in a very special way, as if each tree is his fellow townsman, his appearance and personality are ripe in his heart, and his blunt scientific terms can be transformed into approachable. For example, he says that the leaves of Nantou stone oak have a "long tail" at the tip, and each leaf swings at a different angle. "stacked together is like a lot of tails swinging." what emerges in front of the listener is a graceful dancing tree with pink flowers and dreams, which makes it hard for people who have never heard of this tree to forget.

I studied in the forest department because I loved nature. After graduating in 2008, I was even more sure that I loved plants, so I went to the research center of Lianhuachi Forest Research Institute in Nantou as an assistant to record the data of weather stations in the forest area. Lianhuachi is the most well-preserved natural forest in Taiwan at middle and low elevations. Lin Ching-ching is like a fish in water. He observes the weather every day in the name of going up the mountain to observe the weather. In fact, he closely watches the pulsation of this forest.

The leaves of Nantou stone oak, growing tail-shaped, swaying when swaying in the wind (Photo / Cai Jiashan)

The pink florets of Nantou stone oak (Photo courtesy of Lin Jianqing) Acorn is not only found in the North, but also in Fagaceae in Taiwan.

The forest, which is motionless in the eyes of ordinary people, is ever-changing for Lin, and walking along the mountain path is always full of surprises and questions. "I'm here with them every day, and I naturally have a sense of mission." the knowledge and emotion gained from it is so full that he has to share it. "if I don't do this, who will do it?"

So he came up with the idea of writing an illustration, but there were so many tree species that it was impossible to do all of them. where do we start? The first thing to emerge is the beloved "Fagaceae".

It may be strange for many people to say "Fagaceae", but when it comes to "acorns", you can understand the nut that squirrels have been chasing in the animated "Glacier Adventures", and "Totoro" gave her sister a bag of fruit as a gift, and even the delicious sugar fried chestnuts are all the fruits of Fagaceae-acorns.

Acorns appear not only in temperate countries, but also in sunny southern countries such as Taiwan, which have richer and more diverse shell families. In terms of quantity, Fagaceae is the second largest family of broad-leaved forests in Taiwan (the first is Lauraceae), but in terms of volume, Fagaceae ranks first.

Photography / Cai Jiashan

The fruit of Quercus variabilis wearing a golden wavy lace hat (Photo courtesy of Lin Jianqing) breaks through iron shoes to photograph the critical moment of the tree, and the flowers, fruits and leaves are all exquisite photos

"Shell bucket" is a shell-shaped hat, and the loveliness of acorns lies in the ever-changing hat style, which attracts people to stop to pick it up and enjoy it. Spread out the chart, as if to open the hat catalogue: Wulaike wears a classic woolen hat, Taiwan stone oak wears a flat hat, cork oak wears a fluffy long-haired hat like the Lion King, and the most exaggerated is Quercus, which wears ⋯⋯, a golden fluffy hat with wavy edges.

But Faget's excellence is not just the appearance of acorns. Lin Ching-ching recorded 45 species of Fagaceae in Taiwan in detail. He not only took pains to look around, took beautiful pictures of each species with branches and leaves, but also took a close-up of the fresh flowers of each kind of tree. The flowers on the soft spikes only a few millimeters were magnified ten times, blooming stars on the paper.

Even the most common leaves change when you look at them carefully. Even if the same kind of tree has tender leaves, new leaves, mature leaves, and old leaves, the leaves are round and slender, and the sawtooth or waves at the edges of the leaves are also deep and shallow. Lin Shih-ching listed various leaf shapes one by one, and patted out the leaf surface and back, so that readers can more easily identify them according to the picture.

What is even more amazing is that this thick book, which is heavier than a brick, is a special portrait of all the leaves, flowers, and fruits, which are all filmed by Lin himself and processed by software. It's not obsessive-compulsive disorder. What is it? He shook his hand and firmly denied that he had obsessive-compulsive disorder, but his friends said that he was fascinated by the tree spirit.

Between the readers' trees: "barefoot" step on "red hook", "dripping" like a child's pee

"Tree Fairy" is really fascinating, and Lin is fascinated not only by the creatures themselves, but also by the stories of interaction between people and trees. He casually twisted it and pointed to a tree by the side of the road with prickly fruit, like a sea urchin. "this is Castanopsis carlesii, the most delicious fruit in the forest. People used to use it to stew it in the embers of charcoal fire, like wild sugar fried chestnuts. Everyone said it was delicious."

Castanopsis carlesii, which is called "red hook" in Taiwanese, once met a local volunteer elder sister who told him that his uncle loved to eat red hook, and the uncle went barefoot wherever he went. As soon as he saw the bare hook fruit, he flattened it with bare feet on the spot until the seeds inside ran out. The "barefoot" covered with thick cocoons was completely unafraid of the sharp thorns of the "red hook", which impressed him deeply. It turned out that Fagoda is full of interesting and warm memories of ordinary people.