陽明山國家公園全球資訊網-英文網陽明山國家公園全球資訊網-英文網

Its Chinese name, the 'five-colored bird', results from the bird's five different colors: red, yellow, black, blue, and green. It is also sometimes called 'flowery monk' because its call resembles the sound of wooden fish that monks hit with mallets. The black-browed barbet builds nests on dead trees in broad-leaf forests, and its main staple is berries.

Among the numerous butterfly species, the chestnut tiger is the species that appears earliest during the butterfly-watching season. During the May 'plum rain' season, many chestnut tigers form quite a spectacle as they feed on orchid nectar along the trail from Erziping parking lot to Mt. Datun main peak.

The grey-cheeked fulvetta is about twelve centimeters long from head to tail. It has a gray head, black eyes and a white ring around the eyes that is quite distinctive. The upper back is gray-brown and the lower back and tail feathers are a yellowish brown. The bird's breast is often a light brown color. The fulvetta is a very lively and chatty species and often mixes with other species in the thickets. Their main food staples are seeds, berries and insects.

The most commonly seen wild animal in the forest, the squirrel has a brown body and a distinctive red-brown stomach. They can be seen climbing up tree trunks or prancing among the branches with their bushy gray tails in regions at sea level as well as in the central mountain range up to an altitude of 2,000 meters.

Latin name: Eupatorium shimadai Kitam It is an herb with single leaves growing in parallel pairs. The pinnate leaves are lance-shaped with long narrow tips. The leaves are between 2 and 7 centimeters long with serrated edges and glandular dots on their underside. Unlike other plants in the Asteraceae family, which are made up of clusters of tiny flowers, the Eupatorium shimadai’s blossom is formed from 5 small tubular flowers. The inflorescence is reddish with clustered and tight flowers. It flowers from May to July. The entire plant is fragrant.

Latin name: Machilus thunbergii Sieb. & Zucc.The tree most representative of Yangmingshan National Park is red nanmu. In spring it is adorned with red, pig foot-like flower buds, which earned it the Chinese name of “pig foot nanmu”. It often mixes together with other broad-leaved trees to form large forests.

Latin name: Miscanthus sinensis Anders. Silver-grass is a hardy pioneer species that grows quickly and spectacularly in reclaimed land, wastelands, and collapsed land. The flowers in the Yangmingshan area bloom bright red because of the sulfuric gases in the area, distinguishing it from regular plain-white blossoms.

Latin name: Isoetes taiwanensis DeVol Taiwanese Isoetes is native to Yangmingshan's Menghuan Pond. It is a perennial aquatic fern and extremely rare. Taiwanese Isoetes grows in wetlands and ponds. During the winter wet season it remains submerged and emerges during the dry summer months while the mud remains moist. The leaves are slender and green with a bit of translucency. They grow in clusters and have wider bases, resembling little teaspoons. The leaves grow to be about 4 to 15 centimeters long with an aerenchyma (thin-walled cells separated by four air chambers) to store oxygen and carbon dioxide and conduct photosynthesis and exchange gases.

Latin name: Sinobambusa kunishii (Hayata) Nakai Usawa cane was once used to make arrow shafts (also called “arrow bamboo” in Chinese) because of its straight, tough, and durable culm (stem). It only flowers a single time in its life, resulting in the death of the parent plant and a new generation of bamboo shoots. Normally, bamboo shoots sprout from the bamboo's underground rhizome nodes to form new bamboo plants.