44 The Exotic Plants from China 从中国来的外来植物 When getting rid of the rotten weeds for the daisy in your courtyard or on your balcony with a spade, do you know it is an exotic plant? As a monument near a pyramid in Egypt shows collecting exotic plants dates back to around 1500BC. In the 18th century European missionaries and botanists anchored in the Yellow Sea and did their endeavor to collect typical Chinese plants on a large scale, such as dove trees which appealed to them very much.The difficulties they met included thunderstorms, restrictions on their movement and conflicts with pirates, who carried spears and never shaved their beards.Their fluency in Chinese helped them a lot. To lower the death rate of the plants they used strings to fix plants in tightly sealed containers, which were attached to other goods and shipped back to distant Europe. However, a problem appeared.Among these plants,some gave out a delicate or fragrant odour to attract particular beetles or wasps.Some gave out a fruity or musty smell to attract certain bats and moths, while other odourless plants with dull petals used the nectar inside their tubes to attract humming-birds Without these pollinators which evolved together with the plants to pollinate for them, most plants postponed to get ripe despite enough irrigation.(209 words/ 55 new)