1 . Every tree tells a story. They hold our memories, represent belief, and witness countless moments of joy and sorrow. In our imagination, there is always a place for a tree.
For the locals in Naunde, Mozambique, a mango tree provides more than just shade from the Saharan sun. It is also a traditional setting for storytelling, ceremonies, and regulating village life. “It is a place to meet and talk, to seek agreement and settle arguments, to bridge differences and develop unity,” wrote Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the UN. “If you have a problem and can’t find a solution, you meet again tomorrow under the tree and you keep talking.”
The mango tree always stands there, witnessing and remembering everything, and at the same time becomes an inseparable part of the collective memory of the locals. “Each growth layer that trees add every year contains a bit of the air from that year. The trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air through tiny pores (气孔) , which helps build their tissues, so they physically hold the record of the years of their surroundings,” said Benjamin Swett, author of New York City of Trees. In this way, trees also serve as nature’s memory stick, keeping a record of a history as long as themselves.
The English language borrows a lot from trees: We turn over a new leaf and branch out, meaning we move on from the past and start something new. And there are times when we can’t see the wood for the trees. We tend to enjoy the flourishing leaves, branches, and roots of the trees. However, we pay little attention to the forests that embrace trees. The same things often happen to us in our own lives. We often dip ourselves into some bad experiences in life. As a result, we may give up at a terrible moment instead of imagining satisfying success after defeating the failure.
Trees inspire mankind, not just through language, but through ideas. Perhaps the most famous is a tree in a garden in Lincolnshire, England, where an apple fell and inspired young Isaac Newton to wonder: Why would that apple always fall directly to the ground? According to an 18th-century account, Newton was home from Cambridge when he stepped into the garden and into a reverie (沉思) . There, the idea of gravitation came into his mind, inspired by an apple.
1. What is the role of a mango tree in Naunde?| A．A spot to bind the locals together. | B．A witness to the changing weather. |
| C．A generous food supplier on Earth. | D．A shelter to protect villagers in disasters. |
| A．By changing the width of their growth layer. |
| B．By sticking out branches in different directions. |
| C．By absorbing carbon dioxide to build their tissues. |
| D．By reflecting changing climate conditions with their tiny pores. |
| A．Suggestions on facing failure. | B．Famous English stories about trees. |
| C．The relationship between trees and forests. | D．Lessons from English expressions related to trees. |
| A．To explain the necessity of observation. | B．To show how gravitation was discovered. |
| C．To stress the importance of trees in inspiring ideas. | D．To introduce how trees serve as a mirror of history. |
1. What does Jacob ask Amy to do?
| A．Enjoy the flowers. | B．Provide help. | C．Grow flowers. |
| A．Every day. | B．Every two days. | C．Every three days. |
| A．They lack water. | B．They lack sunshine. | C．Their leaves turn yellow. |
| A．Water flowers in time. | B．Learn about growing flowers. | C．Grow flowers with Amy. |
3 . When lightning caused fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the fire spread quickly. Mild fires strike coastal redwood (红杉) forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark (树皮), up to about 30 centimetres thick at the base, which contains acids. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames. But this time flames shot through the top of 100-metre-tall trees, burning the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree expert at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”
Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The survivors use long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds (芽) that had been lying dormant (休眠的) under the bar k for centuries.
“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with big fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could cope with the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate environment.
The fire in 2020 was so intense that even the top branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize (光合作用) went up in smoke along with their pine needles. Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates (碳水化合物), which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Although the redwoods have sprouted (长出) new growth, Peltier and other forest experts wonder how the trees will cope with far less energy from photosynthesis, given that it will be years before they grow as many needles as they had before the fire. “They’re alive, but I would be a little concerned for them in the future.”
1. What’s special about this big fire for coastal redwood forests in 2020?| A．It burnt the top of the trees. | B．It was very close to the last fire. |
| C．It resisted burning effectively. | D．It caused relatively minor damage. |
| A．Sugars protected their barks. | B．Energy reserves promoted the growth of buds. |
| C．They got used to hot climate. | D．They took in much carbon to resist fire. |
| A．Unpredictable disasters. | B．Changeable climate. |
| C．Terrible environment. | D．Uncontrollable fires. |
| A．Their tissues can’t be repaired. | B．They can’t save energy anymore. |
| C．Their energy saved is not sufficient. | D．They grow too slowly. |
4 . There are a number of animals that give off light in some way-including several kinds of insects and fish. Some kinds of mushrooms give off light, too. But most plants don’t give out light. Now, scientists are working to change that.
When a living thing gives off light, it’s called bioluminescence(生物发光). Fireflies are a well-known example of bioluminescence. Though less well-known, many mushrooms are also bioluminescent. These bioluminescent creatures light up thanks to the chemicals called luciferins(荧光素)inside their bodies. Luciferins cause a chemical reaction that can give off light.
Plants don’t naturally have luciferins, so there are no naturally bioluminescent plants. But that hasn’t stopped scientists from trying to create them. In the past, scientists have created plants that made less bright by adding DNA from shining objects. Scientists have also created plants that can give off light by adding luciferins to plants. But it only works as long as the chemicals last. In 2017, a team was able to cause a plant to give off light for about four hours.
Now, researchers at a Russian company have come up with a new method of creating shining plants. By adding certain parts of the DNA from shining mushrooms to ordinary tobacco plants, the researchers were able to create plants that could make their own luciferins. The scientists reported that the light was about 10 times brighter than in earlier shining plants.
The researchers believe that shining plants could help scientists learn more about the way plants work. For example, the moving patterns or waves of light in the plants may show activities in plants that normally can’t be seen. The shining also helps reveal how plants may be affected by things around them. For example, the plants gave off much more light strongly when a ripe banana skin was nearby. But the researchers don’t think the plants will just be used for science. They think many people may want shining plants for their beauty. So they are working with a company to develop shining plants for sale.
1. What phenomenon does the author describe in paragraph 1?| A．Most animals hate giving off light. |
| B．Many plants give off light through scientists’ efforts. |
| C．Animals give off light to protect themselves. |
| D．It’s hard to find plants that give out light. |
| A．It gives off lots of heat to warm itself. |
| B．It has chemical reactions inside its body. |
| C．It lacks energy due to chemical reactions. |
| D．It informs other fireflies of the danger. |
| A．By showing numbers. | B．By making a comparison. |
| C．By providing examples. | D．By making a summary. |
| A．Human development results in less shining plants |
| B．Scientists manage to create shining plants |
| C．People’s lifestyles are reflected in shining plants |
| D．Geography determines the types of shining plants |
1. What is Akira Miyawaki?
| A．A scientist. | B．A professor. | C．An officer. |
| A．Producing more oxygen. |
| B．Dealing with climate change. |
| C．Attracting different kinds of animals. |
| A．It helped communities build 100 forests. |
| B．It taught people to grow their own mini forests. |
| C．It educated kids about tiny forests. |
| A．Mini forests are inspired by a French scientist. |
| B．Miyawaki has planted more than 1,000 forests in Japan. |
| C．Planting mini forests has become popular in Europe. |
1. What are the good seeds confirmed by?
| A．Containers. | B．X-rays. | C．Freezers. |
| A．To be preserved for long. |
| B．To tackle climate change. |
| C．To safeguard food supply. |
| A．Where seeds are stored. |
| B．How the seed bank works. |
| C．Why seed banks are important. |
7 . You’ll only find cherry blossoms in a handful of countries.
Called sakura in Japan, the cherry blossoms of Yoshino and Kyoto are world-famous. Tourists flock to the country each spring to try their hand at a centuries-old activity “flower viewing”. You don’t have to fly to Japan to see them, though. In the US, the cherry blossoms of Washington, D.C., New York City, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston are all beautiful in their own way. The flowers can also be viewed in many European and Asian countries, as well as Brazil and Australia in the southern hemisphere.
There are hundreds of cherry tree varieties.
Japan in particular is home to hundreds of types of cherry trees -possibly more than 600.Some types bear fruit, while others don’t. The flowers of many trees change from dark pink to light pink to white throughout the different stages of blossoming, while others progress from greenish yellow to white to pink. One variety, called Kanzan, was bred to have “double blossoms” — or up to28 petals (花瓣) on each flower, compared to the Yoshino tree’s five petals.
You can get arrested for picking a cherry blossom in Washington, D. C.
Resist the urge to take a cherry blossom home with you as a souvenir. In D.C. at least, breaking off a blossom or branch is viewed as destruction of federal property. Those who break this rule could receive a citation (传票), or worse, be arrested. It goes without saying that it’s also illegal to climb the trees. If they sustain damage to their branches, they will never be able to grow new blossom on that particular branch again.
Both the blossoms and leaves are edible.
In Japan, no part of the cherry blossom tree pes to waste. The preserved leaves are used as edible mochi wrappers (a rice cake filled with sweet bean paste), and a number of seasonal snacks feature sakura as a key ingredient Sakura-flavored versions of Pepsi, Coke, tea, and even Starbucks lattes are all popular drinks. You can also find Kit Kats and Pocky snack sticks that taste like sakura.
They were the inspiration behind a record-setting LEGO sculpture.
Legoland Japan, a theme park in Nagoya, set a Guinness World Record in 2018 for the largest LEGO brick cherry blossom tree ever made. The trees stood 14 feet tall, weighed over 7000 pounds, and consisted of more than 800,000 LEGO bricks.
1. In which country can’t you see cherry blossoms according to the passage?| A．America. | B．China. | C．Germany. | D．Egypt |
| A．Climbing cherry trees is tolerable in Washington. | B．Sakura-flavored snacks and drinks are welcomed. |
| C．Kanzan sakura is better than Yoshino sakura. | D．The largest cherry blossom tree grows in Japan. |
| A．A passionate environmentalist. | B．An ecological researcher. |
| C．A student interested in plants. | D．A tourist in Japan |
8 . Some of the oldest living things on our remarkable planet are trees. The record holders are bristlecone pines (狐尾松) of the western United States, quite a few of which are known to be more than 3,000 years old. One individual, discovered in 2012, is estimated to be more than 5,060 years old, making it the oldest known non-clonal tree in the world!
So, how do trees survive for thousands of years?
The other part of the answer has to do with how trees age. In fact, there is quite a debate about whether ancient trees can be considered “immortal (永生的)”. That is, will such trees ever die if they are not killed by an outside force? We may never know the answer to that, but, at the very least,
Older trees benefit greatly from having bodies made mostly of dead woody tissue. In fact, an old tree might be as much as 95 percent dead tissue! Given that it isn’t alive, wood does not require metabolic (新陈代谢的) activity to maintain it,
| A．so an old tree doesn’t really need to do much to keep living |
| B．This is a question that has something to do with the good luck of trees |
| C．However, bristlecones are certainly not alone in terms of the oldest creatures |
| D．This is a fascinating question for biologists that does not yet have a settled answer |
| E．What’s more, some ancient trees have superior chemical defenses against pests and diseases |
| F．which means that trees can survive everywhere without being limited by external and internal conditions |
| G．we know that ancient trees age in ways that are dramatically different from the ways that most animals and even other plants age |
9 . Scientists have been experimenting with playing sounds to plants since at least the 1960s, during which time they have been exposed to everything from Beethoven to Michael Jackson. Over the years, evidence that this sort of thing can have an effect has been growing. One paper, published in 2018, claimed that an Asian shrub known as the telegraph plant grew substantially larger leaves when exposed to 56 days of Buddhist music — but not if it was exposed to Western pop music or silence. Another, published last year, found that marigolds and sage plants exposed to the noise of traffic from a busy motorway suffered growth difficulty.
Plants have been evolving (进化) alongside the insects that eat them for hundreds of millions of years. With that in mind, Heidi Appel, a botanist now at the University of Houston, and Reginald Cocroft, a biologist at the University of Missouri, wondered if plants might be sensitive to the sounds made by the animals with which they most often interact. They recorded the vibrations made by certain species of caterpillars (毛毛虫) as they chewed on leaves. These vibrations are not powerful enough to produce sound waves in the air. But they are able to travel across leaves and branches, and even to neighbouring plants if their leaves touch.
They then exposed tobacco plant — the plant biologist’s version of the laboratory mouse — to the recorded vibrations while no caterpillars were actually present. Later, they put real caterpillars on the plants to see if exposure had led them to prepare for an insect attack. The results were striking. Leaves that had been exposed had significantly higher levels of defensive chemicals, making them much harder for the caterpillars to eat. Leaves that had not been exposed to vibrations showed no such response. Other sorts of vibration — caused by the wind, for instance, or other insects that do not eat leaves — had no effect.
“Now speakers with the right audio files are more often being used to warn crops to act when insects are detected but not yet widespread,” says Dr. Cocroft. “Unlike chemical pesticides, sound waves leave no dangerous chemicals.”
1. What can we learn about plants from the first paragraph?| A．They may enjoy Western music. | B．They can’t stand Buddhist music. |
| C．They can react to different sounds. | D．They can make different sounds. |
| A．Plants can make a cry for help. | B．Plants evolve alongside insects. |
| C．Plants are sensitive to the sounds. | D．Plants have been studied for years. |
| A．They can recongnize harmful vibrations. | B．They look like laboratory mice. |
| C．They can threaten the caterpillars. | D．They can release poisonous chemicals. |
| A．Disadvantages of chemical pesticides. | B．Application of the experimental results. |
| C．Interaction between plants and insects. | D．Warning system of widespread insects. |
10 . Bred to be more sweeter, today’s cherries, bananas and apples taste different than they used — to but not necessarily better. Among fruit farmers, the word “quality” is now routinely used as a standard for “high in sugar”, though firmness, color and size are also considerations. In a recent study about ways to enhance the sweetness of fruit using “molecular (分子的) approaches”, a group of plant scientists wrote that, in general, the sugar content of many fruits are now higher than before owing to continuous selection and breeding. Modern apple varieties, the scientists stressed, were on average sweeter than older ones.
The sweetness of fruit depends not just on how it is bred but also on growing conditions, yield and harvest. The lead researcher, Sugiura, said, “If you could taste an apple harvested 30 years ago, you would feel the difference.” He believed that modern apples are picked so early that even if they are bred for sweetness, they often don’t develop their full character. The fragrance (香味) never develops in fruit that is harvested too early.
Jim Cooper, an apple farmer in England, is regretful to admit the fact that many people will never taste the “strawberry hint” in a really ripe Pearmain, a type of heritage apple. In a way, the rise of consistently sweeter fruit in our lifetimes has been a victory of plant breeding. After all, it’s a rare person who would seek out bitter grapes if they could have sweet ones instead.
But the sweetness of modern fruit is not without its problems, especially for people with diabetes (糖尿病), who have to reduce their intake of higher-sugar fruits. Fruit that is bred sweeter also tends to be lower in the chemicals that make it healthy. Considering health, maybe the real problem with modern fruit is that it has become yet another sweet thing in a world with sugar. Even grapefruits, which used to be quite bitter, are sometimes now as sweet as oranges. If you’ve never tasted a sour cherry, how can you fully appreciate a sweet one?
1. In what aspect is many fruits different from before?| A．Sugar content. | B．Soft skin. | C．Bright color. | D．High yield. |
| A．They are bred too early. | B．They taste so sweet. |
| C．They are losing a good flavor. | D．They need a higher yield. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Critical. | C．Ambiguous. | D．Indifferent. |
| A．It’s a wise choice to breed fruits for sweetness. |
| B．Breeding sweet fruits improves the quality of fruits. |
| C．Some fruits like grapes and cherries taste the same. |
| D．The sweetness of fruits will cause health issues. |
