【TED演讲】世界上最奇特植物的手绘插图

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I have a challenge for you.

我有一个挑战给你。

The next time you're stuck in traffic, take a minute to take a look at the sea of cars around you.

下次您被困在交通中时，花一分钟时间看看周围的汽车海洋。

How many car companies do you think you could recognize?

您认为您能认出多少家汽车公司？

I'm not even really into cars, but I think I'd do fairly well.

我甚至不太喜欢汽车，但我想我会做得相当好。

But then look beyond the cars to the trees that line the side of the road.

但然后再看看汽车之外，路边的树木。

How many of those could you identify?

您能识别出其中多少个？

Probably not as many, right?

可能没有那么多吧？

Year upon year, we grow further and further away from nature to the point where we have to question:

年复一年，我们离自然越来越远，以至于我们不得不质疑：

What experience of nature will the next generation have?

下一代将对大自然有什么体验？

And if that generation lacks a sort of emotional connection with their surroundings, then will they bother to fight and save it when we need it most?

如果那一代人与周围环境缺乏某种情感联系，那么他们会在我们最需要的时候费心去战斗并拯救它吗？

My name is Nirupa Rao, and I'm a botanical artist.

我的名字是Nirupa Rao，我是一名植物艺术家。

In short, that means I paint plants, usually with watercolor,

简而言之，这意味着我通常用水彩画植物，

in a way that aims to be not only aesthetically appealing but also scientifically accurate.

其目的不仅是美观，而且是科学准确的。

And I'm well aware that this is quite an odd profession for a 21st-century urban Indian -- some might say outdated in the age of the camera -- but here's how my journey began.

我很清楚，对于21世纪的城市印度人来说，这是一个相当奇怪的职业--有些人可能会说在相机时代已经过时了--但我的旅程是这样开始的。

A few years ago, I met two naturalists who work with the Nature Conservation Foundation: Divya Mudappa and T.R.

几年前，我遇到了两位在自然保护基金会工作的博物学家：Divya Mudappa和TR

Shankar Raman.

香卡·拉曼。

And now interestingly, they actually began their careers working with animals,

现在有趣的是，他们实际上开始了与动物一起工作的职业生涯，

but they soon came to realize that if they were to protect those animals, they'd also have to protect their habitats -- that is,

但他们很快意识到，如果他们要保护这些动物，他们也必须保护它们的栖息地--也就是说，

the trees they live off.

它们赖以生存的树木。

And so they started a rainforest restoration program aimed at growing local trees that local birds and animals rely on.

因此，他们启动了一项雨林恢复计划，旨在种植当地鸟类和动物赖以生存的当地树木。

And they were looking to visually document them in some way, but the photographers they approached came up empty-handed.

他们希望以某种方式直观地记录它们，但他们接触的摄影师却空手而归。

These trees were up to 140 feet tall.

这些树高达140英尺。

That's 26 times my height.

这是我身高的26倍。

Try capturing giants like that in a single camera frame.

尝试在单个相机框架中捕捉这样的巨人。

Besides, the surrounding greenery was just too dense to clearly isolate a single tree.

此外，周围的绿化植物太茂密，无法清楚地隔离一棵树。

And so together, we decided to give good old painting a shot.

因此，我们决定一起尝试一下好的古画。

And to tell you the truth, even when I was standing there right in front of them, it was difficult to see the entire tree.

说实话，即使我站在他们面前，也很难看到整棵树。

So instead I'd study the buttress up close and then climb up the hill to see its crown rising above the canopy.

因此，我会近距离研究扶壁，然后爬上山，看到它的树冠升起到树冠上方。

And then with Divya, and she there as aide, we could piece these pieces of the puzzle together into the final painting.

然后，有了达薇亚和她作为助手，我们可以将这些拼图碎片拼凑成最终的画作。

For a lot of people who don't know the jungles as well as these naturalists,

对于很多不像这些博物学家那样了解丛林的人来说，

these paintings are the only way that they'll get to see these trees in their entirety.

这些画是他们完整地看到这些树木的唯一方法。

We were able to document 30 of the region's most iconic species along with their fruit, flowers, seeds and leaves.

我们记录了该地区30个最具标志性的物种及其果实、花朵、种子和叶子。

Through this process, the jungles really came alive to me.

通过这个过程，丛林对我来说才真正活跃起来。

They morphed from this undifferentiated sea of green into individual species with individual characters.

它们从这片未分化的绿色海洋演变成具有独特特征的个体物种。

And I think a lot of people just tend to see plants as background scenery, assuming that their immobility makes them uninteresting.

我认为很多人只是倾向于将植物视为背景风景，认为它们的静止使它们无趣。

But I began to see that it is that very rootedness that makes them fascinating,

但我开始发现，正是这种根深蒂固让它们着迷，

the ingenious ways in which they adapt and respond to threats and opportunities on timescales that make our heads hurt to imagine.

它们以巧妙的方式适应和应对时间尺度上的威胁和机遇，让我们难以想象。

And I couldn't help but wonder: What if I could tell their stories, showcase their complexity?

我不禁想知道：如果我能讲述他们的故事，展示他们的复杂性会怎样？

Perhaps we'd all start to think of plants a little differently.

也许我们都会开始对植物有一些不同的看法。

And in fact, in my family, plants have always been a source of fascination.

事实上，在我的家庭中，植物一直是迷人的源泉。

My grand-uncle, Father Cecil Saldanha, was the first to document the flora of our home state of Karnataka back in the '60s.

我的祖父塞西尔·萨尔达尼亚神父在60年代是第一个记录我们家乡卡纳塔克邦植物群的人。

And my mother has all of these memories of being a little girl watching this entire enterprise unfold.

我的母亲拥有作为一个小女孩观看整个企业展开的所有这些记忆。

And consequently, I've come to associate plants with adventure and discovery and excitement.

因此，我开始将植物与冒险、发现和兴奋联系在一起。

And so I knew I didn't just want to paint roses and sunflowers.

所以我知道我不仅仅想画玫瑰和向日葵。

I wanted to paint the kinds of plants that botanists like my uncle work with.

我想画像我叔叔这样的植物学家使用的植物种类。

And so I set out to create a book, supported by the National Geographic Society, on the weirdest,

因此，我开始在国家地理学会的支持下创作一本书，讲述最奇怪的，

wackiest plants we could find in one of the most biodiverse regions in the world: India's very own Western Ghats.

我们可以在世界上生物多样性最丰富的地区之一找到最奇怪的植物：印度自己的西高止山脉。

Take a look at these fantastic jewel-like sundews.

看看这些奇妙的宝石般的圣代。

They grow in regions where nutrient content in the soil is poor, and so they have a little way of supplementing their diets.

它们生长在土壤营养含量较差的地区，因此它们有一点补充饮食的方法。

They lure, trap and ingest insects using mucilaginous glands on their leaves.

它们利用叶子上的粘液腺体引诱、诱捕和摄入昆虫。

The little insects are attracted to the sweet secretions, but once they come in contact, they are ensnared and the game is up.

这些小昆虫被甜味的分泌物吸引，但一旦接触，它们就会被困住，游戏就结束了。

And you might notice that the sundews very cleverly hold their flowers on tall,

你可能会注意到，双叶草非常巧妙地将它们的花朵高高地举着，

thin stems high above their murderous leaves to avoid trapping potential pollinators.

细茎高于凶残的叶子，以避免诱捕潜在的传粉者。

Further inside the jungle, you might meet the strangler fig.

在丛林深处，你可能会遇到勒死者无花果。

It grows in areas where sunlight is scant and competition is intense.

它生长在阳光稀少、竞争激烈的地区。

And so it has a strategy to sort of cut in line and get ahead.

因此，它有一个缩小界限并取得领先的策略。

You see, its seeds are dispersed by birds that drop them atop the branches of existing trees.

你看，它的种子是由鸟类传播的，鸟类将它们撒在现有树木的树枝上。

And that little seed will start to germinate from there, sending its shoots upward to the sky and its roots all the way down to the ground,

那颗小种子会从那里开始发芽，将芽向上送入天空，将根一直送入地面，

all the while strangling the host tree, often to death.

同时勒死宿主树，经常导致死亡。

And even if that host tree dies and rots away, the strangler will persist as a hollowed-out column of roots and branches.

即使宿主树死亡并腐烂，扼杀者也会作为一根掏空的根和树枝柱而存在。

And if that didn't impress you, let me show you one of my personal favorites: the Neelakurinji.

如果这没有给您留下深刻的印象，让我向您展示我个人最喜欢的一款：Neelakuriji。

When it blossoms, it does so in unison, covering entire hillsides in carpets of blue.

当它开花时，它会一致绽放，整个山坡都被蓝色地毯覆盖。

This is its pollination strategy known as "gregarious flowering," in which it invests all of its resources into a single,

这是被称为“群居开花”的授粉策略，它将所有资源投入到一个单一的，

spectacular event aimed at attracting pollinators to the feast -- which is easily done,

旨在吸引传粉者参加盛宴的壮观活动--这很容易做到，

considering the Neelakurinji is all that can be seen for miles around.

考虑到Neelakuriji是周围几英里内所能看到的一切。

But here's the catch: it happens only once every 12 years.

但问题是：这种情况每12年才会发生一次。

And soon after seeding, these flowers will die, not to be seen again for the next 12 years.

播种后不久，这些花就会死亡，在接下来的12年内不会再出现。

This is our way of telling a story of the Western Ghats:

这是我们讲述西高止山脉故事的方式：

through plants and through their ecosystems and the various ways in which they interact with players in their habitats.

通过植物及其生态系统以及它们与栖息地中玩家互动的各种方式。

It's glorious, isn't it?

这很光荣，不是吗？

But the way things are going, we can't be sure that the Neelakurinji will come out to play again in the next 12 years.

但从目前的情况来看，我们无法确定Neelakuriji是否会在未来12年内再次出现比赛。

The further and further we grow from nature, the more we are almost literally blind to it and the effects that our activities have on it.

我们离自然越远，我们就越对自然以及我们的活动对自然的影响视而不见。

And that's what it's called -- "plant blindness": the increasing inability to really register the plants around us as living beings.

这就是所谓的“植物失明”：越来越无法真正将我们周围的植物登记为生物。

The two scientists that coined this term, Elisabeth Schussler and James Wandersee, contend that plants lack certain visual cues.

创造这个术语的两位科学家伊丽莎白·舒斯勒和詹姆斯·万德西认为植物缺乏某些视觉线索。

They don't have faces, they don't move, and we don't perceive them as threats.

他们没有脸，他们不会移动，我们也不会将他们视为威胁。

And so with the increasing onslaught of information that our eyes receive, we just deprioritize registering plants,

因此，随着我们的眼睛收到的信息越来越多，我们只是不再优先登记植物，

simply filtering out information that we view as extraneous.

简单地过滤掉我们认为无关的信息。

But stop to think about that.

但请停下来想一想。

Are plants really extra?

植物真的是额外的吗？

Are they just nature's backdrop?

它们只是大自然的背景吗？

Or are they the fundamental building blocks upon which all life is based,

或者它们是所有生命赖以生存的基本组成部分，

the starting points of our ecosystems and the reason why earth is sustainable for life to this day?

我们生态系统的起点以及地球至今仍能维持生命的原因？

I leave you with these images from a program called "Wild Shaale," which in Kannada means "wild school." It's run by a conservationist, Krithi Karanth.

我给您留下了这些来自一个名为“Wild Shaale”的节目的图像，在卡纳达语中，这意味着“Wild Schaale”。“它是由自然资源保护主义者克里蒂·卡兰斯（Krithi Karanth）经营的。

And her team turned some of my illustrations into games that village children could play with and learn from.

她的团队将我的一些插图变成了游戏，供村里的孩子们玩和学习。

And I can tell you they were so excited to see plants that they recognized -- the trees that the monkeys play on,

我可以告诉你，他们非常兴奋地看到他们认出的植物--猴子玩耍的树，

the flowers they use at their harvest festival, the fruit they use to wash their hair.

他们在丰收节上使用的鲜花，他们用来洗发的水果。

And it's that sort of familiarity which, when celebrated, turns to love, which then turns into an urge to protect.

正是这种熟悉，当庆祝时，它会变成爱，然后又变成一种保护的冲动。

It's really time we open our eyes to the world around us, to this entire kingdom that's hidden in plain sight.

现在是我们睁开眼睛看看周围的世界，看看这个隐藏在众目睽睽之下的整个王国的时候了。

And so the next time you're stuck in traffic, you know what to do.

因此，下次你遇到交通堵塞时，你知道该怎么办。