Species Composition and Community Characteristics of Rubber Forest in Danzhou，Hainan Island

In 1980, the technical specifications of 50hm2 plots were built in the tropical forest of Barro Colorado Island in Panama by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. According to this technical specification, an area of 1hm2 rubber forest was selected as dynamic monitoring plot to analyze the species composition and community characteristics in Danzhou, Hainan in 2012. The results showed that: (1) there were 183 species, belonging to 155 genera and 69 families in the 1hm2 rubber forest plot. There were five dominant families (having more species), i.e. Rubiaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Gramineae, Asteraceae and Moraceae. Compared with tropical rain forest in Xishuangbanna, rubber forest showed more diversity and high cover of herb species. (2) Community structure of rubber forest was very simple, only including three layers: tree laye, shrub layer and herb layer. Rubber forest was different from other tropical forests in that there were only one canopy layer, less species in the shrub layer, and less epiphytes, parasitic species, but there were more species in the herb layer. (3) Microphyllous and Mesophyllous leaves accounted 759% of total species. Single leaf (756%), entire leaves (650%), papery leaf (612%) dominated the rubber forest. The leaf size, leaf type and leaf texture of rubber were completely different from tropical forests in Hainan and Xishuangbanna. The percentage of leathery leaf, entire leaf and microphyllous leaf was low, but the percentage of papery leaves,nonentire leaves and mesophyllous leaves and macrophyllous leaves was relative higher, which was reflecting the moist and tropical nature of the rubber forest in Hainan.