VOA标准英语2010年-Rwandan Water Lily Grows in London

The world's largest water lilies are blooming in a tropical greenhouse at London's Kew Gardens.

The world's smallest known water lily (Nymphaea thermarum), extinct in its native central African habitat, is thriving in a British botanical garden. Scientists hope to someday return it to the wild in Rwanda. In the meantime, they plan to display the lilies, intermittingly, starting May 22.

The world's largest water lilies are blooming in a tropical greenhouse at London's Kew Gardens.

Behind the scenes, scientists here are preparing to display for the first time the world's smallest water lily.  It was discovered in Rwanda in 1987.

These are some of the only photos of the lily in the wild, found on the edges of a thermal¹ spring by a German scientist. He collected samples that eventually ended up here. 

Kew botanist² Carlos Magdalena tried for months but the seeds wouldn't grow like other water lilies. So he tracked down a description of where the lily was originally found.

"This water lily, it doesn't grow in a lake or in a river or in a pond, it grows in a thermal hot spring which bubbles water up," Magdalena explained.

Rwanda's brutal³ genocide in 1994 threatened the rare thermal water lily. The genocide and the war in neighboring Congo displaced millions of people.  As Rwandans returned and rebuilt, the water lily's habitat was altered and the plant became extinct in the wild.

Magdalena replicated⁴ the plant's original environment, and the lilies thrived. "They start like this, these tiny, almost impossible to see leaves, then they develop further," he said.

Except for one plant sample in a German botanical garden, these are the only thermal lilies anywhere in the world. There are about 40 of them.

Eventually, scientists here would like to take some plants back to Africa.

"We're on the track to bringing it back to Rwanda. We have more plants in cultivation⁵ than were originally seen in the wild before it went extinct," said Stephen Hopper, the director of Kew Gardens. "But we have only just worked out how to germinate⁶ it and bulk up the numbers, so it will take a few years."

For now, the tiny lily from Rwanda will live and, many hope, flourish here in Britain.
 

1 thermal   

adj.热的，由热造成的；保暖的

参考例句：

• They will build another thermal power station.他们要另外建一座热能发电站。
• Volcanic activity has created thermal springs and boiling mud pools.火山活动产生了温泉和沸腾的泥浆池。

2 botanist   

n.植物学家

参考例句：

• The botanist introduced a new species of plant to the region.那位植物学家向该地区引入了一种新植物。
• I had never talked with a botanist before,and I found him fascinating.我从没有接触过植物学那一类的学者，我觉得他说话极有吸引力。

3 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

4 replicated   

复制( replicate的过去式和过去分词 )； 重复； 再造； 再生

参考例句：

• Later outplant the seedlings in a replicated permanent test plantation. 以后苗木出圃栽植成重复的永久性试验林。
• The phage has replicated and the donor cells have lysed. 噬菌体已复制和给体细胞已发生裂解。

5 cultivation   

n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成

参考例句：

• The cultivation in good taste is our main objective.培养高雅情趣是我们的主要目标。
• The land is not fertile enough to repay cultivation.这块土地不够肥沃，不值得耕种。

6 germinate   

v.发芽；发生；发展

参考例句：

• Seeds will not germinate without water.没有水，种子是不会发芽的。
• Can thin and hollow seeds germinate?瘦瘪的种子能够发芽吗？