Primary Study on Reasons for the Growth Re-cession of Fragrant Camphor Trees at the West Lake Scenic Area and Diagnosis Procedure

Fragrant camphor tree is the city tree of Hangzhou which takes a large proportion of the ancient trees in Hangzhou City. Recently, with the free open of the attractions around the West Lake and the implementation of the comprehensive pro- ject for protecting the West Lake, a part of ancient fragrant camphor trees are fac- ing problems such as altered living conditons. Some of them are showing a decline in growth vigor or even close to death, which will produce extremely negative influ- ences on the maintaining and sustainable development of the West Lake Scenic Area if without any timely measures for the rescue and rejuvenation of the trees. Therefore, strengthening the protection and management of ancient fragrant camphor trees at the West Lake Scenic Area and carrying out researches on the procedure for diagnosing the reasons for the growth recession of the ancient fragrant camphor trees at the West Lake Scenic Area are of great significance for the future protec- tion and rejuvenation of the ancient trees around the West Lake. The factors influ- encing the growth of ancient trees and indexes for judging the growth condition were listed and the reasons for the growth recession were systematically summa- rized in this paper. In addition, measures for the rejuvenation of the ancient fragrant camphor trees were also simply discussed.