New York Times, Haaretz, News and Walla!
Snow lotus in Tibet. Lost almost 10 centimeters of his height
Humans are apparently to blame for the fact that a species of the snow lotus plant (Saussurea lancipes), which grows in the Himalayas, is getting smaller. Over the past 100 years, the plant has lost almost 10 centimeters of its height, as was published yesterday in the "Journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences".
The snow lotus, which grows at altitudes of more than 4,000 meters on rocky mountain slopes in Tibet and China, is a sought-after commodity for the preparation of traditional medicines and is even used as a popular botanical souvenir for tourists.
From an examination of 218 snow lotus plants found in museums, it became clear that a hundred years ago the plant reached an average height of about 25 centimeters, but since then it has lost almost 10 centimeters. Wayne Lowe of Washington University in St. Louis and Wayne Salik, also of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, compared the plants in the museums to lotus plants sold for healing purposes and to tourists in markets in Yunnan, China. They also examined snow lotus plants at various sites, some in unprotected areas and others in nature reserves on a mountain in Tibet that is considered sacred.
The researchers discovered that in non-protected areas the lotus plants tended to be shorter than those growing in the reserves. The findings, the researchers say, point to rapid evolutionary changes as a direct result of human intervention. People who collect the plant for medicinal purposes choose the tallest lotus plants, because these are considered to have better healing properties, and in the eyes of tourists, the bigger the plant, the more beautiful it is. The lotus plant is usually harvested shortly after it blooms and before it disperses its seeds.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~213700449~~~199&SiteName=hayadan
