A complete record by Lin Huanqing of 45 common species of Fagaceae oak/acorn plants in the forests of Taiwan, China

It would be more accurate to say the trees chose him than that he chose the trees. Lin Huanqing moves nimbly along the forest trails of Lianhuachi in Nantou, as if an invisible rope were pulling him up the steep slopes. After farming for more than five years in Hualien, he returned to this forest that he had been longing for. Among all of it, what he holds dearest are the tall "acorn family"—the trees of the Fagaceae family.

To say he was longing for it is no exaggeration at all. Once, in order to photograph and document in detail the flowers, fruits, and leaves of every species of Fagaceae tree, he traveled all over Taiwan, China searching, yet often hit a wall. Take his favorite, the Nantou tanoak (Lithocarpus nantoensis): he kept watching for it, yet never once saw it bloom. Then one night, a tree came to him in a dream and said in a steady voice, "I have bloomed. If you don't come now, it will be too late." Lin Huanqing woke with a start.

He speaks of this dream visitation with reverence. Lin Huanqing sees himself as a servant of the trees, single-mindedly devoted to faithfully conveying the beauty of the forest. After ten years of honing one work, his book "An Illustrated Guide to the Acorn Family of Taiwan, China" landed with real weight, praised by experts as reaching world-class standards in both text and images, combining knowledge with warmth, and opening a new model for nature guides.

The Lianhuachi forest was his awakening, turning him into a vivid "tree storyteller"

Did the Nantou tanoak really bloom? "The next day I took binoculars up to look, and no matter how I searched I couldn't find it. I thought the dream had tricked me. A week later I came again and found what looked like a bulge beside the leaves—it really was a flower bud!" Lin Huanqing says with a laugh. Later the whole tree burst into bloom, a soft pink. "Just think—such a big tree giving you pink flowers, there's a sense of incongruity." Today he has returned to the side of this tree from his dream, and like old friends reunited, he lets me take a photo together.

Lin Huanqing's way of describing trees is very special, as if every tree were a fellow villager of his, whose looks and personality he knows inside out, and he can turn stiff scientific terminology into something approachable. For example, he says the leaf tips of the Nantou tanoak are "long-tailed," and every leaf sways at a different angle, "so when they overlap it looks like a lot of tails swishing." What listeners picture is a graceful, dancing giant tree that blooms pink and sends dreams, making it hard for anyone who had never heard of this tree to forget it.

Because he loved nature, he studied forestry, and after graduating in 2008 he became even more certain of his passion for plants, so he secured a position as a research assistant at the Lianhuachi Forestry Research Center in Nantou, where his job was recording data from the weather station in the forest area. Lianhuachi is the most intact tract of natural forest preserved at low to mid elevation in Taiwan, China, and Lin Huanqing took to it like a fish to water, going up the mountain every day in the name of observing the weather but in truth closely watching the pulse of this forest.

Acorns are not only in the northern lands; the Fagaceae of Taiwan, China are even richer and more splendid

To ordinary eyes the forest stands still, but to Lin Huanqing it is ever-changing and dazzling, and walking the mountain trails is always full of surprises and questions. "I'm here with them every day, and naturally a sense of mission arises," he says. The knowledge and emotion he has gained are too abundant, and he must share them: "If I don't do this, who will?"

So the idea of writing an illustrated guide sprouted, but there were too many tree species to do them all. Where to begin? The first thing that came to mind was the universally beloved "Fagaceae."

Saying "Fagaceae" may leave many people puzzled, but saying "acorns" and everyone understands: the nut the squirrel chases endlessly in the animated film "Ice Age," the bag of fruits the Totoro gives his sister as a gift, and even the delicious sugar-roasted chestnuts are all fruits of the Fagaceae family—acorns.

And acorns do not appear only in temperate countries; warm, sunlit southern lands like Taiwan, China possess an even richer and more diverse acorn family. In terms of number, Fagaceae is the second-largest family of broadleaf forests in Taiwan, China (the first being Lauraceae), but by timber volume, Fagaceae ranks first.

Wearing out iron shoes to capture the trees' key moments, with delicate portraits of flowers, fruits, and leaves

The "cupule" is the cup-shaped cap, and the charm of acorns lies in their ever-changing hat styles, which draw people to stop and pick them up to admire. Opening the guide is like opening a hat catalog: the Urai tan oak (Pasania uraiana) wears a classic woolly beanie, the Taiwan tan oak wears a flat cap, the cork oak wears a shaggy mane like a lion king's, and the most outrageous is the ring-cupped oak, wearing a golden fuzzy hat trimmed with wavy lace...

But the splendor of Fagaceae is not just the appearance of the acorns. Lin Huanqing meticulously documents 45 species of Fagaceae plants in Taiwan, China, not only taking pains to seek them out everywhere and photograph each species' branches, leaves, and fruits beautifully, but even more rarely, he close-ups the fresh flowers of each tree, magnifying tenfold the tiny flowers, each only a few millimeters, on the soft catkins so they bloom like starbursts on the page.

Even the most ordinary leaves, examined closely, show endless variation. Even within the same tree, there are tender leaves, new leaves, mature leaves, and old leaves; leaves may be round or slender, and the serrations or waves along the leaf margins may be deep or shallow. Lin Huanqing lists every leaf shape one by one and also photographs both the leaf surface and the underside, so readers can more easily identify by the pictures.

Even more astonishing is that in this thick book, heavier than a brick, all the close-up photos of leaf, flower, and fruit parts were taken by Lin Huanqing himself and then background-removed with software. If that isn't obsessive-compulsive disorder, what is? He waves his hand and firmly denies having OCD, but his friends all say he has been bewitched by the "tree spirit."

Reading the relationship between people and trees: "bare feet" stepping on "chigou," "dripping" like a little child urinating

The "tree spirit" really is enchanting, and what fascinates Lin Huanqing is not only the organisms themselves but also the stories of interaction between people and trees. Casually, he points to a tree by the road bearing a fruit covered in sharp spines, like a sea urchin: "This is the large-leaved tan oak (Quercus dentata? no—Quercus championii?)." Wait, keep as written: "This is the large-leaved tan oak. It is the most delicious fruit in the forest. People used to 'roast' them, throwing them into the embers of a charcoal fire to cook through, like wild sugar-roasted chestnuts. Everyone says they're super delicious."

The Taiwanese Hokkien name for the large-leaved tan oak is "chigou." Once he met a local volunteer auntie who told him that her uncle loved eating chigou, and this uncle went barefoot wherever he went; whenever he saw the fruit of the chigou, he would step on it flat on the spot with his bare feet until the seed inside came out. The calloused "bare feet" were completely unafraid of the "chigou's" sharp spines, which left a deep impression on him. It turns out the Fagaceae family is full of amusing and heartwarming folk memories.