If you have a locust tree at home, you will have peace every year. Why is the reputation of Robinia pseudoacacia so high?

"If you have a locust tree at home, you will have peace every year." This sentence describes the Amorpha fruticosa, which is known as the "green guard". Amorpha fruticosa has a strong ability to resist wind and fix sand, and can also conserve water and soil. In areas ravaged by wind and sand, it creates strips of green barriers.

Amorpha fruticosa, also known as cotton locust, cotton strip, spike flower locust, is a deciduous shrub of the genus Amorpha in the Leguminosae family. It has strong germination ability and a well-developed root system. It can grow on barren hillsides, roadsides, river banks, and saline-alkali land. Amorpha fruticosa has extremely strong resistance to flooding, salt-alkali, barrenness, wind and sand, pests, smoke, and pollution, which are extremely rare in plant populations.

Data picture: Amorpha fruticosa in Xinhua Forest Farm, Linhe District

Amorpha fruticosa has a wide range of uses. Its leaves can be used as green manure, its branches can be used to weave baskets, and its seeds can be used to extract oil. Its roots, stems, and leaves contain amorpha glycosides, which can be used to make medicines. The medicines made from it mainly treat carbuncles, burns, scalds, eczema, etc. Amorpha fruticosa is native to North America, and its planting areas have now expanded to North China, Central China, Northwest China, and the Yangtze River Basin. In recent years, it has also been introduced and cultivated in Guangxi and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau.

Zhongwei Shapotou National Nature Reserve is located on the bank of the Yellow River. The climate here is harsh, with changeable temperatures, drought and little rain, and often rolling yellow sand. Amorpha fruticosa has taken root in this barren land with its tenacious vitality, and with its weak body it has blocked the wind and sand, turning the vast desert into an oasis. Amorpha fruticosa also thrives in the greening area of ​​the Shandong section of the Yellow River.

The "Junma Power Station" is located in the Dalat Photovoltaic Power Generation Application Leading Base, lying like a "horse" in the Kubuqi Desert in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The "Junma Power Station" adopts the "forest-light complementarity" model, that is, power generation on the panels, restoration under the panels, and planting between panels. Economic crops such as Amorpha fruticosa and Astragalus membranaceus are planted between photovoltaic arrays, and sand-dwelling shrubs and grass plants are planted under photovoltaic panels to achieve windbreak and sand fixation and ecological restoration, and protect the ground between photovoltaic arrays from wind and sand erosion. Photovoltaic panels can generate electricity and block wind, improving the living environment of plants under the panels. As of 2022, the "Junma Power Station" has cumulatively treated 16,000 acres of sand.

Amorpha fruticosa, the guardian of the desert, is a witness to ecological protection and a "hero" in the effective control of desertification in my country.

Review expert: Yang Rurong, associate researcher at the Institute of Geography and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences

China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Xinhuanet

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