Hsieh collected and asked my opinion about this new genus, which he thought to be closely allied to the American genera Sequoia and Sequoiadendron, the California coastal redwood and the famous big tree. In the autumn of the same year Professor Cheng sent to me fragments of herbarium specimens Mr. Hsieh, to go twice to Mou-tao-chi in February and May 1946, and these trips resulted in the collection of specimens of flowers and young fruits of this water fir, from which Professor Cheng understood the morphology of this tree more clearly. Professor Cheng then sent his assistant, Mr. The drawing came to the Archives of the Arnold Arboretum through the courtesy of Dr. The tree from which the type specimen of Metasequoia glyptostroboides was collected, in Modaoqi village in west central China. Cheng of the same department, who considered this tree not a Glyptostrobus but a new genus, on account of the opposite character of the peltate fruiting scales, which differ from those of Glyptostrobus although the deciduous linear leaves are somewhat similar. Wang, who gave him a branchlet of the water fir with two cones. Chung-lung Wu, an assistant in the department of forestry of the National Central University, met Mr. Wang collected herbarium specimens of leafy branches and fruits of this tree and thought it to be Glyptostrobus pensilis Koch, or shui-sung, the water pine, which is a common deciduous coniferous tree in Kwangtung province found also in Kiangsi. Lung-hsin Yang to go to western Hupeh by way of Wan Hsien and Enshi in order to investigate the shui-sa at Mou-tao-chi.Īt Mou-tao-chi Mr. Wang, a staff member of the Central Bureau of Forest Research, went to western Hupeh to explore the forests at Shen-lung-chia, and was asked by Mr. Lung-hsin Yang, the principal of the Agricultural High School, to collect herbarium specimens for him. Unfortunately no specimens were collected at that time as all the leaves had fallen off.

This attracted the attention of Professor Kan. Kan of the Department of Forestry of the National Central University journeyed from Hupeh to Szechuan, and saw on the roadside at Mou-tao-chi in Wan Hsien a large deciduous tree that was called by the natives shui-sa, or water fir. Primary credit for the discovery of Metasequoia glyptostroboides belongs to Professor Hu and his Chinese colleagues. He had been among the first from his country to study botany in the West and was the first Chinese botanist to receive a doctorate from Harvard University. Professor Hsen Hsu Hu (1894-1968) was director of the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology in Beijing when he collaborated with Wan-Chun Cheng (1904-1983), professor of forestry at National Central University in Zhongjing, in naming and describing Metasequoia glyptostroboides.