Botanical Studies Based on Textual Evidences in Eastern Asia and Its Implication on the Climate

Accurately understanding the morphological descriptions of plants by ancient people more than 1,000 years ago, and determining the plant species that people described, is of great value in understanding the natural geographic distribution of plant taxa, the var-iation of plant taxa, and climate change. The variation on the plant group and the climate at that time is critical for understanding the change of combination of plant taxa and the climate and the impact of human activity. However, there is limited research in this area. More studies have focused on plant taxa from billions of years ago or money millions of years ago. Research on the plants and flora of this period is limited. And little was known about climates prior to the millennium. In this study, the special text was selected, and the plant names, plants' morphological features were gathered and plant taxonomy were carried out. The study identified 3 species of gymnosperms, namely Pinaceae and Cu-pressaceae, one species of Tamaricaceae monocotyledon, and 19 species of dicotyledons. However, three plant groups could only be identified to the level of genus. In our study, we reconstruct the climate of 1.475 millennia ago through plant textual research and woody plant coexistence analysis in the western section of Henan Province in eastern Asia, in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. The results showed that the mean temperature of the coldest month was around 1.3°C higher than that in modern times, the mean temperature of the warmest month and mean annual temperatures were lower than the corresponding modern values 1.475 millennia ago, implying that tem-peratures in the Luoyang region were slightly lower with a respective mild change at the time, which was supported by other studies of the same period. At the same time, the study concluded that 1.475 millennia ago, the ancient Luoyang region, located in the interior of central East Asia, had high temperatures and rainfall in the summer and low temperatures in the winter, but the mean annual precipitation, the hottest seasonal pre-cipitation, and the coldest seasonal precipitation were all higher than those in the modern Luoyang region. Despite East Asia's predominantly monsoonal climate, the water con-tent of air currents was significantly higher than it is today. This study provides high-resolution plant and climate background information for rebuilding the ecological environment in East Asia.