In the mountains along China's longest river, the Yangtze, about 1,256 species of rare plants have entered botanist Huang Guiyun's rescue radar in the past three decades.

Huang is the director of the Rare Plants Research Institute of Yangtze River. Her fieldwork covers an area of 55,000 square meters around the nation's greatest reservoir, the Three Gorges Dam in Yichang City, central China's Hubei Province, and ridges of 660 kilometers upstream.