Tales of triumph in quests to find rare flora

3. Centrolepis banksii, found in Hainan province

On Christmas Eve in 2020, Zhou offered a reward of 5,000 yuan ($688) on Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo to anyone who could find a plant called Centrolepis banksii.

A species of plant in the Restionaceae family, it is a grass found mainly in northern Australia. According to specimen data, this species is also found in Vietnam and Hainan province in China.

However, the last time a Chinese researcher had been able to locate a specimen in Hainan was in 1956.

Zhou always believed that a small plant like Centrolepis banksii wouldn't just disappear. Therefore, from 2018, he started traveling to Hainan every year before the flowering and fruiting period of the plant to search for it. Whenever he traveled to Hainan for work, finding the plant became a priority for him.

In 2020, he and a Hainan botanist searched for the plant in Qicha town for two days but were unable to find it.

So Zhou decided to post the 5,000 yuan reward, hoping to enlist the aid of others to find the tiny plant.

One day last year, a friend informed him that someone had found the plant in Hainan. After inquiring extensively, he learned that a survey team from the Kunming Institute of Botany had unintentionally discovered it during a field investigation in Hainan in early April. They saw some of the plants on the brink of wilting.

Zhou estimated that it should sprout and flower around November to December.

In late October last year, he eagerly joined the KIB team on a trip to the collection site to search for seedlings of the plant. However, perhaps because they had arrived early, they were unable to find what they were looking for.

On Jan 1 this year, while dining with Professor Zhang Kai from Hainan University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, Zhou mentioned the plant. Zhang offered to check its growth status in Hainan and immediately inform Zhou if he found anything.

On Jan 11, Zhang, accompanied by three students, conducted a plant survey in Wenchang. After spending an afternoon searching for the plant, as darkness approached, Zhang called Zhou to report that they had been searching for a long time without success and were considering giving up.

However, shortly after, Zhang made a video call to Zhou. They had found it!

Zhang explained that while intending to show a student a tiny flower on the grassland, they unexpectedly stumbled upon Centrolepis banksii, which was incredibly small.

Zhou spent the night sleepless with excitement. After work on Jan 12, which happened to be a Friday, he and two of his friends drove through the night to Haikou and finally found the blooming plant.