Because of the great expanses of desert, the plant life in Xinjiang is monotonous. There are pine forests in the Tian Shan and stands of drought-tolerant trees in many places on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert. Apart from these trees, the most common are varieties of poplar and willow. In the Tian Shan and other mountains there is a great assortment of plants and wildflowers, many of which have never been classified. Nonetheless, more than 3,000 plant species have been identified in Xinjiang, of which some 300 have economic or medicinal value.

Blackcurrant

Ribes nigrum, or Blackcurrant is a species of Ribes berry native to central and northern Europe and northern Asia, and now is a specialty in Ili. Blackcurrant is a small shrub growing to one to two meters tall.

Cumin

Cumin is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceous, native from the east Mediterranean to East India. Now it is very important in Xinjiang cuisine.

Lammergeyer

The Lammergeyer is an Old World vulture, the only member of the genus Gypaetus. It breeds on crags in high mountains in southern Europe, Africa, India, Tibet and Xinjiang, laying one or two eggs in mid-winter which hatch at the beginning of spring.

Like other vultures it is a scavenger, feeding mostly from carcasses of dead animals. It usually disdains the rotting meat, however, and lives on a diet that is 90 percent bone marrow. It will drop large bones from a height to crack them into smaller pieces.

Eurasian Spoonbill

The Eurasian Spoonbill is a wading bird of the ibis and spoonbill family Threskiornithidae, breeding in southern Eurasia from Spain to Japan, and also in North Africa and Xinjiang, China. Most birds migrate to the tropics in winter, with European breeders mainly going to Africa, but a few remaining in mild winter areas of western Europe north to the United Kingdom.

This species is almost unmistakable in most of its range. The breeding bird is all white except for its dark legs, black bill with a yellow tip, and a yellow breast patch like a pelican. It has a crest in the breeding season. Non-breeders lack the crest and breast patch, and immature birds have a pale bill and black tips to the primary flight feathers. Unlike herons, spoonbills fly with their necks outstretched.

Wikipedia