Menghuan Lake home to unique fern species

This article was written by Abby Lee and published by The Taiwan Journal on June 6, 2003.

Taiwan's Yangmingshan National Park, located in Taipei's northern suburbs, is well-known for its biodiversity, especially as found in its wetlands. Yangmingshan's water plants are mostly found in marshes and lakes in volcanic craters such as Menghuan Lake, which is situated at the foot of Chihsing Mountain, the highest peak in the national park. While visiting the lake in winter, the foggy environs afford travelers picturesque scenery with a mysterious atmosphere that makes them feel as if they have arrived in some otherworldly realm. People thus called it Menghuan Lake - literally "like a dream lake". This wetland ecosystem provides a seedbed nursing Taiwan isoetes, or Isoetes taiwanensis, a type of fern unique to the island.