Ornamental plants of Orchidaceae and their functional groups in Beipan River basin of Guizhou

Abstract

In order to protect and develop wild Orchidaceae (orchids) plant resources in Beipan River basin of Guizhou, scientifically screen high ornamental value orchids and explore their environmental adaptation characteristics, we took orchids distributing in Beipan River basin of Guizhou as the research project, selected species with high ornamental value based on analytic hierarchy process, and used clustering and redundancy analysis to identify the species composition of plant functional groups under different environmental conditions. The results were as follows: (1) There were 74 genera and 249 species (including varieties) of orchids, the horizontal spatial distribution was concentrated in two areas, namely the border area of Wangmo County and Ziyun County, and the western area of Panzhou City, repectively. The vertical spatial distribution showed an “intermediate expansion” with the change of altitude, the orchids were mainly distributed in the range of 800 -1 600 m. (2) Orchids in the study area could be divided into three ornamental grades, the first was the excellent grade for development, with 51 species, the second was the reserve grade for development, with 170 species, and the third had 28 species with low ornamental values, which were not necessary to be developed as ornamental plants. (3) Development optimal levels of ornamental orchids in the study area could be divided into four ecological function groups, which were low-altitude shade-requiring non-limestone mountain functional group, low-altitude heliophile limestone mountain functional group, intermediate-altitude shade-requiring limestone mountain functional group and high-altitude heliophile non-limestone mountain functional group, respectively. The types of adaptation of orchids to the environment varied greatly among different functional groups. All the above results indicate that screening high ornamental value orchids and dividing their ecological function groups is conducive to landscape application, scientific protection, introduction, domestication and development, and field regression of orchids in the future.

Keywords

• orchid
• species diversity
• ornamental value evaluation
• ecological functional groups
• plant resource development