I care about this kind of thing, not in the way that I will know whether your details are correct or not but in that way that I find specific, concrete details about setting very grounding. They make the story feel real and vital to me.

One pro-fic writer that does this really well for me in the context of an ecological lens is Jeff Vandermeer in The Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance). One of the POV characters is a biologist, and she is very attuned to the natural world and describes the flora and fauna in exquisite detail. I know jack all about what she was observing, but I enjoyed reading her observe it.

I think how you do this is dependent on your POV; if you're in a close/limited third with Zhao Yunlan, you have to decide how much you think he'd know/recognize about the world around him. He'd observe it all because he's a detective, etc., but I'm not sure I believe he's really knowledgeable about plants. If you're in a third omniscient, then I think you can go whole hog, and I would buy Shen Wei having more knowledge if you're in his POV.

I really, really like when authors bring their own interests or places they've lived/traveled or their jobs or whatever to their writing. It makes it feel rich and layered and real in a way that having everything be constructed of details from the source material does not.

I feel like I am now straying from the question you actually asked. LOL