Quote Originally Posted by pipokun View Post
So how many Belgians think biodiversity includes your great Botanic Garden?
For me, a botanic garden is just a garden.
No, that was just an example in response to Elizabeth's post. The actual number of plants in a country does not mean much, because nowadays species are imported from numerous countries. That is why it becomes difficult to say which species is native and which is not. How long does it take for a species to become "native" ? Cherry trees were imported from China to Japan. Are they native ? If yes, why not a import from 100 or 50 or 20 years ago ? My point was that there are few different kinds of trees in Japanese cities, because Japanese people like to have a lot of the same trees (e.g. gingko, cherries...) rather than a lot of diversity. I guess it matches the Japanese concept of harmony through homogeneity.

The 2nd point of this thread was that Autumn in Japanese cities was very shortlived (only about 2 weeks of "koyo") because of this lack of diversity in trees, while in Belgium the "koyo season" matches almost exactly the 3 months of Autumn. This is also true for flowers and blossoms in Spring. Therefore, Belgian (and most other European) seasons are more clearly marked than in Japan. Therefore, why do the Japanese think of their 4 seasons are more clear-marked ?

If I were Chinese I would ask the Japanese government for a public apology for having taught its people lies about the seasons which have deeply offended trees in my country, because the spirit of the trees in the parks heard Japanese tourists say that Japanese trees had more colourful leaves in autumn.