For many years, the farmers of Juhu Ecological Park have collected and propagated many native tree species for various purposes, such as for ornamental reasons, reforestation, and because they like to. Taking care of young trees requires time, effort, and knowledge about the traits and how to care for them. We have to water them, pull out weeds, and replant them when they are big enough. Because we have a long history of conserving oaks, there are abundant young oaks found in our nursery (almost 70 % of seedlings). In total, we take care of 1800 plants consisting of 29 different plant species (both trees and herbaceous plants).
This year, several more thousands of seeds have been sown in hopes to enrich selective, degraded areas around the park and to plant some by the roads. We spent many hours collecting laurel seeds (from the plant family Lauraceae) when they matured this summer and many more processing them and increasing their germination rates. Why species from this family you may ask? Well, the forest landscape in this coastal mountain range is characteristic of two main types of trees, figs and laurels. Figs are sun-loving plants while laurels are more shade tolerant (but do also prefer light). Laurels are dominant, long-lived trees and are important for the ecosystem. Therefore, we were able to successfully collect three different laurel seeds, Cinnamomum camphora (camphor tree), Machilus japonica Kusanoi tree, and Machilus zuihoensis tree.
Later this autumn, more species will hopefully be added to the list, such as Bischovia javanica (bishops wood) andSapindus mukorossii (soapberry tree), to name a few. We also plan to add more numbers to some of our oak species. We even stored seeds in consideration of sowing them in the future, because locals in the village have noticed some tree species are not found as frequently compared to the past, like the paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) and wild mulberry tree (Morus australis), among many other trees becoming rare in the landscape, as a result of historical clearcutting for agriculture and logging.
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