I have a challenge for you. The next time you're stuck in traffic, take a minute to take a look at the sea of cars around you.
我想给大家一个挑战。下次你堵车时，花一分钟看看你周围的车流。
How many car companies do you think you could recognize?
你觉得你能认出多少汽车公司？
I'm not even really into cars, but I think I'd do fairly well.
我对汽车不是很感兴趣，但我想这个问题并不难。
But then look beyond the cars to the trees that line the side of the road.
那么再看看车窗外，路边的那些树木。
How many of those could you identify? Probably not as many, right?
你能识别出多少来？可能不是很多，对吧？
Year upon year, we grow further and further away from nature to the point where we have to question:
年复一年，我们离自然越来越远，以至于会开始好奇：
What experience of nature will the next generation have?
我们的下一代对自然的体验是怎样的？
And if that generation lacks a sort of emotional connection with their surroundings, then will they bother to fight and save it when we need it most?
如果那一代人对他们的环境缺少情感连接，那么当我们最需要投入环境怀抱的的时候，他们会努力拯救自然吗？
My name is Nirupa Rao, and I'm a botanical artist.
我叫尼鲁帕·饶，是一名植物艺术家。
In short, that means I paint plants, usually with watercolor, in a way that aims to be not only aesthetically appealing but also scientifically accurate.
简短地说，我通常用水彩为植物为主题作画，以一种不仅具有美学吸引力，但同时具备科学精确度的方式。
And I'm well aware that this is quite an odd profession for a 21st-century urban Indian
我很清楚，对一个21世纪的印度都市人来说，这是个非常奇怪的职业，
some might say outdated in the age of the camera -- but here's how my journey began.
有些人会说，这种形式在镜头主导的时代已经过时了--但我的旅途就是这样开始的。
A few years ago, I met two naturalists who work with the Nature Conservation Foundation: Divya Mudappa and T.R. Shankar Raman.
几年前，我遇到两位在自然保护基金会工作的自然学家：迪维亚·穆达帕和T.R.尚卡尔·拉曼。
And now interestingly, they actually began their careers working with animals,
有意思的是，他们最开始的职业是保护动物，
but they soon came to realize that if they were to protect those animals, they'd also have to protect their habitats -- that is, the trees they live off.
但他们很快意识到，如果他们要保护那些动物，他们还得保护它们的栖息地--即它们生活的树林。
And so they started a rainforest restoration program aimed at growing local trees that local birds and animals rely on.
于是他们启动了一个雨林复苏项目，旨在种植当地鸟类和动物赖以生存的树木。
And they were looking to visually document them in some way, but the photographers they approached came up empty-handed.
他们还想用通过视觉的方式进行记录，但他们询问过的摄影师却往往束手无策。
These trees were up to 140 feet tall. That's 26 times my height.
这些树高达140英尺，是我身高的26倍。
Try capturing giants like that in a single camera frame.
可以想象用单帧相机捕捉这些参天大树的难度。
Besides, the surrounding greenery was just too dense to clearly isolate a single tree.
另外，周围的草木太茂密了，很难清晰的分离其中一棵树。
And so together, we decided to give good old painting a shot.
于是，我们一起决定给老画笔一个机会。
And to tell you the truth, even when I was standing there right in front of them, it was difficult to see the entire tree.
说实话，即便当我站在它们前面，也很难看清楚整颗树。
So instead I'd study the buttress up close and then climb up the hill to see its crown rising above the canopy.
所以我就近距离研究树的支撑部分，然后爬上山去观察顶部的树冠。
And then with Divya, and she there as aide, we could piece these pieces of the puzzle together into the final painting.
在迪维亚的帮助下，我们就可以把这些碎片信息拼凑在一起形成最终的画面。
For a lot of people who don't know the jungles as well as these naturalists,
对大多数不知道丛林和这些自然学家的人来说，
these paintings are the only way that they'll get to see these trees in their entirety.
这些画作是他们能看到这些树木全貌的唯一方法。
We were able to document 30 of the region's most iconic species along with their fruit, flowers, seeds and leaves.
我们得以记录下该地区30种最具代表性的物种，以及它们的果实、花朵、种子和叶子。
Through this process, the jungles really came alive to me.
通过这个过程，这些丛林在我面前活了起来。
They morphed from this undifferentiated sea of green into individual species with individual characters.
它们从一片毫无差别的绿色海洋，变成了具有个体特征的个体物种。
And I think a lot of people just tend to see plants as background scenery, assuming that their immobility makes them uninteresting.
我知道很多人只是倾向于把植物视作背景，认为静止的状态让它们显得很无趣。
But I began to see that it is that very rootedness that makes them fascinating,
但我开始意识到，正是这种扎根的本性让它们如此迷人，
the ingenious ways in which they adapt and respond to threats and opportunities on timescales that make our heads hurt to imagine.
它们适应和应对威胁和机遇时的独特方式让我们难以想象。
And I couldn't help but wonder: What if I could tell their stories, showcase their complexity?
我止不住想：如果我可以讲述它们的故事，展示它们的复杂性会怎样？

Perhaps we'd all start to think of plants a little differently.
也许我们都会开始从不同的角度看待它们。
And in fact, in my family, plants have always been a source of fascination.
事实上，在我的家族，植物一直是魅力的来源。
My grand-uncle, Father Cecil Saldanha, was the first to document the flora of our home state of Karnataka back in the '60s.
我的伯祖父，塞西尔·沙尔丹哈，是第一个记录我们家乡卡纳塔克邦植物的人，那是在60年代。
And my mother has all of these memories of being a little girl watching this entire enterprise unfold.
我的母亲拥有所有这些记忆，当时她还是一个小女孩，见证了整个事业在她眼前展开。
And consequently, I've come to associate plants with adventure and discovery and excitement.
因此，我也自然而然的把植物和冒险、发现和惊奇联系在一起。
And so I knew I didn't just want to be into roses and sunflowers.
我知道我不单喜欢玫瑰和菊花。
I wanted to paint the kinds of plants that botanists like my uncle work with.
我还想要画我叔伯那样的植物学家经常打交道的植物。
And so I set out to create a book, supported by the National Geographic Society,
于是在国家地理学会的支持下，我开始写一本书，
on the weirdest, wackiest plants we could find in one of the most biodiverse regions in the world: India's very own Western Ghats.
记录我们能在世界上生物多样性最丰富的地区，印度自己的西高止山脉，找到的最奇特、最古怪的植物。
Take a look at these fantastic jewel-like sundews.
看看这些奇异的珠宝般的茅膏花。
They grow in regions where nutrient content in the soil is poor, and so they have a little way of supplementing their diets.
它们生长在土壤养分含量低的地区，并且有个丰富饮食结构的方法。
They lure, trap and ingest insects using mucilaginous glands on their leaves.
它们利用叶子上的粘液腺来引诱、诱捕和摄食昆虫。
The little insects are attracted to the sweet secretions, but once they come in contact, they are ensnared and the game is up.
小昆虫被甜甜的分泌物所吸引，但一旦接触，就中了圈套，成了盘中餐。
And you might notice that the sundews very cleverly hold their flowers on tall, thin stems
你们可能注意到了，茅膏花非常巧妙地把花托在又高又细的茎上，
high above their murderous leaves to avoid trapping potential pollinators.
高于那些有害的叶子，以避免捕获潜在的传粉者。
Further inside the jungle, you might meet the strangler fig.
在丛林深处，你可能会遇到扼杀者无花果。
It grows in areas where sunlight is scant and competition is intense.
它生长在阳光稀少的地方且竞争激烈。
And so it has a strategy to sort of cut in line and get ahead.
所以它有一种插队领先的策略。
You see, its seeds are dispersed by birds that drop them atop the branches of existing trees.
它的种子是由鸟类传播的，它们把种子撒在现有的树枝上。
And that little seed will start to germinate from there,
那颗小种子就会从那里开始发芽，
sending its shoots upward to the sky and its roots all the way down to the ground, all the while strangling the host tree, often to death.
把它的枝条伸向天空，它的根一直扎入泥土中，直到把宿主树勒住，常常是勒死。
And even if that host tree dies and rots away, the strangler will persist as a hollowed-out column of roots and branches.
即使宿主树死了，腐烂了，“扼杀者”也会以镂空的根枝形态继续存在。
And if that didn't impress you, let me show you one of my personal favorites: the Neelakurinji.
如果这还不够让人印象深刻，我再给你们展示我最喜爱的植物之一：尼拉库林吉花。
When it blossoms, it does so in unison, covering entire hillsides in carpets of blue.
当它开花的时候，所有花朵会同时绽放，为整个山坡覆盖上蓝色的“地毯”。
This is its pollination strategy known as "gregarious flowering,"
这就是它被称为“群居开花”的授粉策略，
in which it invests all of its resources into a single, spectacular event aimed at attracting pollinators to the feast
即把所有资源投入到单一壮观的事件中，一场吸引传粉者的盛宴，
which is easily done, considering the Neelakurinji is all that can be seen for miles around.
这很容易做到，鉴于尼拉库林吉花在几英里内都能看到。
But here's the catch: it happens only once every 12 years.
但这里有个问题：它每12年才发生一次。
And soon after seeding, these flowers will die, not to be seen again for the next 12 years.
在授粉后不久，这些花将会死去，下次看到它绽放，还要再等12年。
This is our way of telling a story of the Western Ghats:
这就是我们讲述西高止故事的方式：
through plants and through their ecosystems and the various ways in which they interact with players in their habitats.
通过植物和它们的生态系统，以及它们和栖息地的主角们多样化的互动方式。
It's glorious, isn't it? But the way things are going, we can't be sure that the Neelakurinji will come out to play again in the next 12 years.
很美好，不是吗？但事实是，我们无法确定尼拉库林吉花在下一个12年还能如常绽放。
The further and further we grow from nature, the more we are almost literally blind to it and the effects that our activities have on it.
我们离自然越远，我们对它们，以及我们的活动对它们的影响就越来越不了解。
And that's what it's called -- "plant blindness": the increasing inability to really register the plants around us as living beings.
这就是所谓的“植物盲”：越来越多的人无法真正将我们周围的植物视为生物。
The two scientists that coined this term, Elisabeth Schussler and James Wandersee, contend that plants lack certain visual cues.
创造这个术语的两位科学家，伊丽莎白·斯库斯勒和詹姆斯·旺德西，认为植物缺乏某些视觉线索。
They don't have faces, they don't move, and we don't perceive them as threats.
它们没有面孔，无法移动，我们也不把它们视为威胁。
And so with the increasing onslaught of information that our eyes receive, we just deprioritize registering plants,
随着我们眼睛接收到的信息越多，我们直接把注意力从植物身上移开了，
simply filtering out information that we view as extraneous. But stop to think about that.
简单地过滤掉了我们认为无关的信息。但请不要再这样想了。
Are plants really extra? Are they just nature's backdrop?
植物真的是多余的吗？它们只是大自然的背景吗？
Or are they the fundamental building blocks upon which all life is based,
还是说它们是所有生命赖以生存的基石，
the starting points of our ecosystems and the reason why earth is sustainable for life to this day?
我们生态系统的起点和今天地球仍然能够维持生命的原因？
I leave you with these images from a program called "Wild Shaale," which in Kannada means "wild school."
最后我要展示的这些照片来自“Wild Shaale”项目，在埃纳德语里是“野外学校”的意思。
It's run by a conservationist, Krithi Karanth.
它的经营者是一位环保主义者克里蒂·卡朗斯。
And her team turned some of my illustrations into games that village children could play with and learn from.
她的团队把我的一些插图变成了村里的孩子们可以玩耍和学习的游戏。
And I can tell you they were so excited to see plants that they recognized
我可以告诉你们，他们对认出了画中的植物感到非常兴奋，
the trees that the monkeys play on, the flowers they use at their harvest festival, the fruit they use to wash their hair.
有猴群玩耍的树木，他们在丰收节使用的花朵，他们用来洗头的水果。
And it's that sort of familiarity which, when celebrated, turns to love, which then turns into an urge to protect.
这种熟悉感在庆祝的时刻变成了爱，然后又转变为保护的冲动。
It's really time we open our eyes to the world around us, to this entire kingdom that's hidden in plain sight.
是时候，让我们睁开眼睛，去观察周遭的世界，去欣赏隐藏在眼前的这一整个王国。
And so the next time you're stuck in traffic, you know what to do.
所以下次当你遇上堵车时，你就知道该怎么做了。