1 . Theoretically some trees could live forever, according to a recent essay that reviews growing evidence on long-lived trees.
Across the board, trees do not die so much as they are killed, write the authors of the review essay. Their killers are outer factors rather than old age alone. That is, there is no evidence that harmful genetic mutations (基因突变) occur over time or that trees lose their ability to continue to grow.
“Trees might live forever, but this does not happen,” says co-author Franco Biondi. “Tree killers include environmental risks such as droughts , wildfires, terrible weather and human behaviors such as woodcutting and fires set to clear forests for hunting or grassland.”
Tree longevity (长寿) interests researchers in part because trees and other plants remove carbon from the atmosphere, and older trees are thought to store more carbon than younger ones. The rings of old trees can also serve as an invaluable record of climate history, with wider rings indicating better years.
David Stahle, a geographer and tree longevity researcher at the University of Arkansas, takes issue with the belief that trees can possibly live forever. “The likelihood, all things being equal, that trees can live forever seems unlikely to me,” he says.
This hypothesis (假设) has become popular in the past 20 years as researchers continue to report having found little genetic evidence of aging in extremely old trees. And this is one of the review essay’s most important points. But evidence of aging could be out there and just not yet found.
1. What does the recent review essay mainly indicate?A.There are a great variety of tree killers. | B.Trees could keep on surviving forever. |
C.More trees die naturally than being killed. | D.Genetic mutations stop trees from growing. |
A.Because the way trees grow rings is more interesting. |
B.Because trees make clearer climate records than other plants. |
C.Because older trees contribute more to the environment. |
D.Because younger trees are less likely to have genetic mutations. |
A.Doubtful. | B.Uninterested. | C.Reserved. | D.Favorable. |
A.The assumption has been proved true. | B.Evidence of aging trees might exist. |
C.Tree research has grown in the past 20 years. | D.Some key points disappear in the review essay. |
2 . Plant biologists have found a way that may enable poor farmers to do away with the need to purchase expensive hybrid seeds every year. Researchers at the University of California report that they have solved a long-standing problem of hybrid seeds by making exact clones of the hybrid plants from seeds.
For long, many crops have been grown from high-yielding, anti-disease or climate-tolerant hybrid seeds. But the seeds of hybrid crops do not produce plants with the same qualities during reproduction and hence farmers cannot save the seeds for the next growing season. They end up paying for new hybrid seeds each sowing season. The discovery, long sought by plant researchers, could make it easier to grow desirable high-yielding crops and make them available to the world’s farmers. Farmers could thus replant seeds from their own hybrid plants and enjoy the benefits of high production year after year, the scientists report.
While the discovery would help farmers, it would also impact the commercial interest of the hybrid seed industry. Siddiq, a former Deputy Director General in the Crop Science Division of the ICAR, said at first sight, this might seem like a setback for hybrid seed companies but there would be plenty of things they can still do. “Rice is grown over such a vast climatic and geographical range that specialized hybrids would have to be developed for each region,” he said. The companies, he said, would continue to improve their hybrids. “It will be interesting to see how all this plays out in the years to come.”
Currently, the high costs of producing hybrid seeds are a major barrier to farmers in developing countries, especially South Asia and Africa. Siddiq said if efficiently used, this method could potentially be a game-changer for poor farmers, who would need to purchase hybrid seeds just once and plant the progeny(后代) seeds from their own harvest in the following seasons.
1. What problem do the researchers aim to solve?A.Farmers’ income. | B.Farmers’ costs. |
C.Hybrid seeds’ cloning. | D.Hybrid seeds’ climate tolerance. |
A.They have a pretty long growth cycle. |
B.They tend to be affected by various diseases. |
C.They have stricter requirements for sowing time. |
D.They fail to reproduce plants with the same quality. |
A.Hopeful. | B.Concerned. | C.Doubtful. | D.Anxious. |
A.The future of the hybrid seed industry. |
B.The drawback of cloning hybrid seeds. |
C.A method of cloning hybrid plants from their seeds. |
D.A means of promoting the specialized hybrid seeds. |
3 . Regarded as the “loneliest tree in the world”, the Sitka spruce (云杉) on uninhabited Campbell Island lately has kept good company with a team of New Zealand researchers who believe it could help unlock secrets of climate changes.
The nine-meter-tall spruce holds the Guinness Record title for the “remotest tree” on the planet. It is the sole tree on the shrubby, windswept island, 700 kilometers south of New Zealand in the Southern Ocean. It’s the only tree for 222km around; its nearest neighbor grows on the Auckland Islands.
Although classified as an invasive species, for radiocarbon science leader at GNS Science, Dr. Jocelyn Turnbull, the tree could be a valuable tool to understand what is happening with the uptake of CO2 in the Southern Ocean. In order to measure CO2 concentrations, taking samples of the atmosphere is the best method, and can be complemented with radiocarbon dating samples of deep water. But it comes with limitations. “You can’t collect air that was there 30 years ago, because it is not there anymore,” Turnbull said, “So we came up with this idea of using tree rings. Plants, when they grow, take CO2 out of the air by photosynthesis (光合作用) and they use that to grow their structures and the carbon from the air ends up in the tree rings.”
This is helpful when there is an abundance of established trees, but those are a rarity in the Southern Ocean. Enter the Sitka Spruce - the south most tree, and the team could find it would offer up good data. “It’s grown a lot faster than anything else in that region and the rings are bigger and easier to separate out and get a record form.”
As for the tree’s lonely status: the description may be in the eye of the beholder. “To get to the tree you have to walk through elephant seals and sea lions, penguins and albatross,” Turnbull said. “The tree doesn’t look lonely …it looks quite content actually.”
1. What is special about the tree?A.It measures nine meters wide. |
B.It is the only tree on a vast land. |
C.It grows on the Auckland Islands. |
D.It owns the Guinness title for the “loneliest tree”. |
A.CO2 builds up in the tree rings. |
B.The Sitka spruce is a native species. |
C.Samples from water are usually inaccessible. |
D.Photosynthesis stops the plants absorbing air. |
A.The tree coexists with a variety of animals. |
B.The tree grows well because of suitable climate. |
C.It’s unwise to use tree rings as an indicator of CO2. |
D.It’s possible to measure previous CO2 concentrations directly. |
A.Trees are of great significance to scientific research. |
B.The “loneliest” tree in the world is not lonely at all. |
C.Global warming has a far-reaching impact on creatures. |
D.A remote Sitka spruce may help us learn about climate changes. |
1. What is the most important thing when planning a garden?
A.Growing what one loves. |
B.Picking the right soil. |
C.Choosing the location of the garden. |
A.5. | B.4. | C.3. |
A.They’re less expensive. |
B.They grow more easily. |
C.Their fruits will grow big enough. |
A.Plant right before the growing season. |
B.Ask an expert for the right soil. |
C.Enjoy the process of planting. |
5 . When scientists talk about recent extinctions, birds and mammals (哺乳动物) get most of the attention. But the first global analysis of its kind finds it is twice as many plants that have disappeared as birds, mammals, and amphibians (两栖动物) combined.
Researchers reviewed published research, international databases, and museum specimens such as grasses from Madagascar, finding that 571 plants species have gone extinct in the past 250 years. One reason why the total is higher than that of the well-studied animals is that there are simply more species of plants. Looking at percentages, the situation is worse for mammals and birds. An estimated 5% of those species have gone extinct, compared with 0.2% of plants.
The loss includes the Chile sandalwood tree in the South Pacific, which was cut down for its fragrant (芳香的) wood. It was last seen on Robinson Crusoe Island in 1908. The extinction rates among plants have been highest for trees and shrubs on islands, which often have species that occur nowhere else, and in regions with rich diversity, especially the tropics and in Mediterranean climates.
Just a few years later, the world lost the banded Trinity (Thismia americana), a leafless plant that grew entirely underground except for its flowers. Most species of this kind of plant grow in rainforests, but this plant was first described in 1912 in a sandy wetland in Chicago, Illinois, and was wiped out by development.
According to the team’s report in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the total of 571 extinct plant species is four times higher than the official listing kept by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Even so, it is probably still an underestimate (低估), as less is known about the status of plants in Africa and South America than on other continents. Many of these species may disappear, too. A major review of the status of global biodiversity recently estimated that more than a million species, including 14% of plant and animal diversity, are threatened with extinction.
1. What caused the extinction of the Chile sandalwood tree?A.Climate change. | B.The market demand. |
C.Environmental pollution. | D.The decline of the habitat. |
A.It flowered without bearing seeds. |
B.It disappeared during the 19th century. |
C.It was a flowering plant without leaves. |
D.It was a rare plant growing underground. |
A.Their current situation is more worrying. |
B.About one plant species dies out every year. |
C.More plant species will keep alive in the reserve. |
D.They would be replaced by other new species soon. |
A.Sports. | B.Nature. | C.Entertainment. | D.Figures. |
6 . Tree-planting, intended to help draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, has become a synonym (同义词) for climate action. In our constant focus on trees, we’ve developed a fixed understanding: Trees absorb carbon dioxide, end of story. The reality is that trees don’t grow well alone. They exist within complex communities, helped along by each other as well as the animals they coexist with. The woodland isn’t nature’s only carbon sink: Grasslands and oceans also help reduce the carbon level and rely on a healthy amount of biodiversity.
That’s what the paper, published in Nature, wants to get across. Co-author Oswald J. Schmitz, a professor of ecology at Yale University, said trees might not be able to do their carbon-uptake job efficiently without the right animals in their ecosystem. That’s because animals animate the carbon cycle through their behavior and roles in the ecosystem. He added that the very presence of wild animals could cause feedback effects that change the ecosystem’s capacity to absorb, release, or transport carbon.
In Serengeti, for instance, the sharp decline in wildebeest (角马) population s during the mid-20th century allowed grass to grow wildly, eventually promoting wildfires that consumed 80 percent of the ecosystem annually and led to a net release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. When disease management and bans on illegal hunting helped animal populations recover, a greater share of the carbon stored in plants was consumed by wildebeest and released as waste, keeping it in the system and restoring the grassland as a carbon sink.
Researchers rarely consider wildlife conservation as a strategy to increase an ecosystem’s carbon storage capacity, said Schmitz. “They think that animals either aren’t important enough or that you can’t take up carbon and conserve animals at the same time,” he said. “Our message is that you can and should. It can be a win-win for both biodiversity conservation and carbon uptake.” We need a full picture-with both trees and animals-to explore nature’s full potential.
1. What can we learn from the first paragraph?A.Actions are needed to reduce carbon dioxide. | B.Trees are a quick solution to the climate crisis. |
C.People are not thinking through trees properly. | D.Grasslands and oceans help maintain biodiversity. |
A.Activate. | B.Restart. | C.Disturb. | D.Break. |
A.The conservation of animals is still a serious issue. |
B.Animals can swing the ecosystem’s capacity to store carbon. |
C.Human impacts bring about the reduction in wildlife populations. |
D.The increase in animal species causes a decrease in carbon uptake. |
A.Animals Adjust Themselves to Climate Change |
B.Woodland Isn’t the Only Carbon Sink on the Earth |
C.The Serengeti Ecosystem Needs Urgent Improvement |
D.Trees May Fail to Fulfil Their Duties without Animals |
A seed bank stores seeds to preserve genetic diversity; hence it is a type of gene bank. Many people may wonder
The record of the
The record-breaking high tree, called Cupressus torulosa(西藏柏木),
Mainly distributed in southeastern Tibet, Cupressus, torulosa has a narrow distribution area and
The previous China tree height record
9 . How to create an indoor garden
If you’re looking for a way to brighten up your home, consider creating an indoor garden.
Know the type of plants you want
Deciding is probably the hardest part when it comes to creating an indoor garden because there are just so many plants to choose from. Start by thinking about what type of plants you want.
Get the right potting soil and containers
Now that you know what type of plants you want, it’s time to get the right potting soil and containers. Make sure to get a potting mix that is specifically designed for indoor plants.
Choose a bright location Once you have your plants and pots, it’s time to choose a location for your indoor garden.
In addition to watering, you’ll also need to add substance to your plants about once a month. This will help them grow and stay healthy. Just be sure to follow the instructions on the package. Don’t overdo it.
A.Give fertiliser monthly. |
B.How exactly can we make one? |
C.Follow the instruction correctly. |
D.But don’t worry, we’re here to help. |
E.This will help your plants grow strong. |
F.Do you want something that will blossom? |
G.Look for a spot in your home that gets a lot of natural light. |
Hawthorn (山楂) trees or bushes are a familiar sight in the UK, where they are often found
The use of hawthorn as a herbal medicine to protect the heart can be traced back for centuries. Its use
Hawthorn is now a popular heart remedy throughout Europe. It can help to protect the blood system that feeds the heart. Hawthorn can also contribute to mild chest pains
Hawthorn is regarded as one of the