Study On Plants In Homegardens Of The Mongolians In Horqin Sandy Land

Thirty peasant households are selected to investigate the homegardens, which in Bashou village and Hariwusu livestock farm of Horqin left wing Rear Banner in Inner Mongolia, with setting thirty sampling plots. Meanwhile, in Han nationality regions, ten peasant households of Gongjihao village are chosen to compare with their Mongolian counterparts. During the research, open-ended and semi-structured interviews are used widely to investigate the social and economic conditions in these areas.The results show that there are some differences among these three villages in the respect of the history of establishment and area of homegarden. It relates to the density of population, area of farmland average to one person, the ownership of electronic well or not. The analysis of the plant species in the three villages shows that the species richness of Hariwusu livestock farm is the lowest, the amount is 3.66, while that of Bashou village is the highest, which is 4.20, showing the greatest contribution of Bashou village to the conservation of plant diversity in this local area. Many factors affect the plant diversity of homegarden, including the history of establishment, area, and management. According to the result of investigation, there are 45 species of plants in the homegardens used by the local Mongolian people as vegetables, 13 as fruits, 13 as forage, 17 as ornamental, and 19 as other usage. Among them, vegetables hold 45.5% in the all useful species. The survive value of the plants in homegarden lies in the growing of vegetables, fruits and forage. The production of most peasant households can only meet the need of themselves,no showing commodity value.The ecological value of homegarden plants express the cultivation of ornamental plants in order to beautify surroundings. According to height of plants, the perpendicular structure of homegarden plants may be classified as 0-1m, 1-2m, 2-5m, 5-10m, and more than 10m. The cultivation mode contains two types of only cultivate vegetables and cultivate both vegetables and other useful plants. Different from the Han nationality regions nearby, there are four categories of homegardens owned by local Mongolians. The result produced by the different tradition between farming culture and animal husbandry culture, the area of homegarden, the history of homegarden, the management of homegarden, and the traditional botanical knowledge on plant species utilization.Generally, the local homegardens characterized the lower species richness of plant. They still on the primary level in the stage of development. For this reason, it is necessary to perfect on the basis of technical assistant and financial support.