Phytogeographical Affinities of Forest Floras between China and Japan

IntroductionEast~ChinaisoneoftherichestregionsinplantlifeintheeaStAsia,itsfloraistl1emainpartofSino-JapanesenOristicedon.whichhasattractedtheat-tenhonofmanybodristsbothathonleandabroad,suchasHu,H.H.,Li,H'L.,St6ward,A.N.Wang,J.X.,Wang,W.T.,Wu,S.G.,Wu,Z.Y.a…

Phytogeographical affinities of forest floras between China and Japan

The flora of eastem China is the main part of Sino-Japanese floristic region. It shows by the analysis and com-parison that the floristic relations of Eastem China with Japan are closer than that ofnortheast China with Korea. The simi-larity indices of genera and species of seed plants in the two regions are very high, being 72.6% and 43.3% respectively.The strure and species compositi6n of broad-leaved evergreen forests in the two regions are also similar, in which there'exist the corresponding communities, such as the forests of Castanopsis carlesii,C.Sieboldii.. Many plants in Easter Chinaare nonspecilic with those in Japan, e. g, Cercidiphyllum japonicum, Magolia sieboldii, Nandina domestica etc.. Though thegnera Ginkgo, Liriodendron, Sassafixis etc. existing now in China are extinct from Japan, their fossils have been discov-ered from the Tertiary Strata in Japan. It seems to indicate that the Phytogeographical affinities between Japan and E. Chinawas closer in ancient time than it is now; and both of the forest floras originated from one same flora. The flora in Japan did not evolve indepently until it separated from Chinese continent and drifted to northeast in the late period of the Tertiary.