The History of the Discovery and Initial Seed Dissemination of Metasequoia Glyptostroboides , a " Living Fossil "

Ever since the "living fossil", Metasequoia glyptostroboides, was discovered during the 1940s in China, accounts of its mysterious discovery and introduction throughout the world have been told many times in different languages. However, information has often departed considerably from the true story. This paper represents a synthesis of more than 1000 original letters, manuscripts and publications both in Chinese and other languages, and addresses two main questions about details of the story: (1) how was the living fossil really discovered, and (2) who introduced the seeds into the U.S.A. and the rest of the world? Several controversies surrounding the course of events are revisited. An appendix summarizes the names and academic positions held by botanists who played a key part in the tree's discovery.


INTRODUCTION
The discovery of living Metasequoia gl yptostroboides Hu & Cheng (Taxodiaceae; known as dawn redwood, Chinese redwood, or water fir, the latter a literal translation of the Chinese name, shui shan) during the 1940s in China was considered one of the greatest botanical discoveries in the twentieth century (Chaney  1947 , 1948, 1951 ; Hu 1948 ; Hu and Cheng 1948 ;  Merrill 1948a, b ; Chu and Cooper 1950 ; Florin 1952 ;  Li 1964; Fulling 1976; C. K. Wang 1981;Bartholomew et al. 1983;Cheng 1984;Hendricks and Sondergaard 1998;Ma 2003a, b;Ma and Shao 2003).Unfortunately, the records documenting the tree's discovery a nd introduction over the past sixty years  are neither complete nor accurate in detail, and sometimes even wrong.Important questions regarding this ancient species still exist in China and the U.S.A. today : Who really dis covered this tree?When, where, and how was it found?Who really introduced the seeds into the U.S .A .and the rest of the world ?Did Ralph Works Chaney bring seeds back with him when he returned from China in the spring of 1948 ?
Over the past four years, I have collected more than 1000 documents, including letters, manuscripts, original publications not only from China, the original place of this tree's discovery, but also worldwide.In 2002, after attending the First International Metase - quoia Symposium in Wuhan, Hubei , I was able to visit Chongqing, Nanjing, and Beijing, China.I collected original documents and met the people wh o know this story well.I also visited related institutions and libraries and collected contemporary publications.With these materials in hand, I have attempted to unravel several long-standing arguments and pro vide more de-tail than ever before about the relev ant issues.An appendix at the end o f this paper summarizes the names and academic positions held by those who played a key part in the story of the discovery of Metasequoia.

INITIAL COLLECTION
As with many di scoveries in science, the discovery o f Metasequoia took place in very much a serendipitou s manner.So it was when Mr. Chan Wang wa s on his way in July 1943 to Shengnongjia in northwestern Hubei Province from Chongqing (formerly Chungking), the wartime capital of China.Chan Wang stopped at Wan Xian on the way due to illness where he learned of a strange tree growing in Moudao (formerly Modaoxi, Ma et al. 2000).He obtained this information from Lung-Hsing Yang , the principal of Wan Xian Agriculture High School.Because of this, C .Wang changed his original route and arrived in Moudao in three days.He then collected a specimen of the unknown tree on July 21 , 1943 ( C. Wang 118).However, due to his administrative resp onsibilities and limited time, he did not pay much attention to his collection.After returning from his trip he identified the specimen as Glyptostrobus pensilis, and deposited it in the herbarium (c.Wang 1948;Ma 2003a, b;Ma and Shao 2003).

MATCHING THE LIVING TREE WITH THE FOSSIL
In the summer of 1945, Mr. Chung-Lun Wu, an assistant teacher at the National Central University, while waiting for a United States visa to continue his studies at Yale Forestry School, went to the National Bureau of Forest Research to study its conifer collection.What followed are two different stories regarding his connection with the discovery of Metasequoia.
Chung-Lun Wu's biography was recorded before his death by his student, Mr. YouXu Jiang, a prominent forest ecologist in the Chinese Forestry Academy (CFA) at Beijing.According to this biography, C. L. Wu happened to note that a specimen in C. Wang's collection (# 118) was not Glyptostrobus pensilis.With C. Wang's permission, C. L. Wu took one sheet of the specimen with two cones back to Professor Wan-Chun Cheng of the National Central University for further identification (Jiang 1985).This was the only record left by C. L. Wu before he died.After writing to Y. X. Jiang, I was able to confirm that this account was based on C. L. Wu's personal recollections, and it had been checked by C. L. Wu prior to printing.Consequently, almost all of the reports from China state that C. Wang gave C. L. Wu a sheet of C. Wang //8 with two cones (Hu 1948;Hu and Cheng 1948;Cheng 1984).
In another version of the story the role of C. L. Wu is less clear.In C. Wang's only publication regarding this tree, C. Wang makes no mention about the transfer of a specimen to C. L. Wu, stating instead that W. C. Cheng visited his institution and identified his specimen as Chieniodendron sinense (c.Wang 1948).
Hence, W. C. Cheng probably first learned of the new taxon from the sheet C. L. Wu gave to him, then followed it up by visiting C. Wang's institute for identifying others (Ma 2003a, b).
In the early spring of 1946, W. C. Cheng from Chongqing sent his student, Mr. Chi-Ju Hsueh, for an official collection of Metasequoia, now aware of the fact that it may be a new taxon.Chi-Ju Hsueh followed C. Wang's directions (Hsueh 1985) and traveled twice, in February and May, from Chongqing to Moudao.This happened before the National Central University moved back to Nanjing in June after the war.Chi-Ju Hsueh made his collections (c. 1. Hsueh 5 on 20 February 1946, which was designated the type specimen of male strobili; and C. J. Hsueh 5/ on 18 May 1946) from the same tree as C. Wang in 1943 (Hu andCheng 1948;Hsueh 1985;Fig. I) (Nelson 1998).Then, H. H. Hu showed his fragments to Mr. Shu-Hsia Fu, his assistant in the Institute, who in turn found a paper by S. Miki (1941) describing the fossil genus Metasequoia.Shu-Hsia Fu showed the paper to H. H. Hu (Ma 2003a, b).This was when H. H. Hu realized that the new conifer was actually the same as Miki's fossil genus Metasequoia.In communication with Dr. R. W. Chaney, H. H. Hu told him that he had found a living example of Metasequoia on 9 May 1946 (Chaney 1949).Hsen-Hsu Hu reported this discovery in his first paper on the living species of Metasequoia in China (Hu 1946).However, due to the civil war in China, H. H. Hu and W. C. Cheng did not formally describe the living Metasequoia until May 1948 (Hu and Cheng 1948).
In the autumn of 1947, with funding from the United States, W. C. Cheng (now in Nanjing, not Chongqing, as reported in Merrill I 948a, b;Fulling 1976) sent another assistant, Mr. Ching-Tsan Hwa (not c.J. Hsueh, as reported in Hu 1948;Merrill 1948a, b;Fulling 1976), to collect seeds and investigate the vegetation in the area where Metasequoia had been discovered.Ching-Tsan Hwa arrived at Moudao on 12 September and made his first collection from the type tree (c.T. Hwa 2, designated type specimen of the female strobilus).Around late September, C. T. Hwa learned from local residents that there were many more trees of the species around Shui-sha-pa (a village name in Metasequoia Valley, Cheng and Chu 1949;Chu and Cooper 1950;Fig. 2).Ching-Tsan Hwa returned to Nanjing in November with about 2 kg of seeds collected from both Moudao and Metasequoia Valley (native distribution area of Metasequoia in Lichuan; Fig. 3).These seeds were sent out of China around Christmas of 1947 and arrived in the United States, elsewhere in Asia, and Europe in late December 1947 and/ or early January 1948 (Fulling 1976;Ma 2003a, b).
Miki discovered the new fossil genus in 1938 and confirmed it with additional collections in 1940 (Chaney 1951) after he had received his Ph.D. from Kyoto   University in 1939.However, he did not publi sh his findings until 1941 (Miki 1941).Few reprints were se nt out at the time his paper was published becau se of the war (Sai to 1995 ).Fortunatel y, H. H. Hu at the Fan Memori al Institute o f Biology d id get on e copy o f Miki's pap er (Saito (9 95 ), a surpri sing fact g ive n the war goin g o n between the Japanese and Chinese at that time.Aft er the war e nded in 1946 , mo st bot anist s a nd pale ob otanists aro und the wo rld were unawa re of Mik i' s publicati on .Indeed, Chinese scienti sts matched the living plant with the fossil described by Miki only a few years ago!EXP EDITIO NS Following the report about the living Metasequoia (Hu 1946) 1947).This was not only the first report in the United States, it was the only one outside China at that time (Ma 2003a, b).In the spring of 1948, having received H. H. Hu's first reprint (Hu 1946), a fragment of a specimen from E. D. Merrill (who, in turn, had received it from China), and seeds from both E. D. Merrill and from China, R. W. Chaney traveled to China and visited Metasequoia Valley in person.Certainly he was the first western scientist to see this living tree (Silverman 1990) .He was accompanied by Dr. Milton Silverman, then a science writer for the San Francisco Chronicle.They left the West Coast of the United States on 13 February 1948 , and returned from China around the end of March and beginning of April, respectively, bringing back seedlings and some seeds.a point long denied by E. D. Merrill (Fulling 1976) and a misconception persisting to this day (Wagner 2003).The fact that Chaney really did bring back seeds is clear from a letter by W. C. Cheng to E. D. Merrill, informing him of the seeds and specimen that R. W. Chaney was bringing back with him.However, E. D. Merrill never mentioned the letter that W. C. Cheng sent to him in this regard (BLHU, Ma 2003a, b).
After H. H. Hu's first publication (Hu 1946) and R. W. Chaney's report (Chaney 1947) , the whole story of discovery was made known to the greater scientific community by E. D. Merrill's two papers 'A living Metasequoia in China' in Science on 6 February 1948 (Merrill 1948a) and 'Metasequoia, another "living fossil''' in Arnoldia on 5 March 1948 (Merrill 1948b).Later, in 1948, a more complete account of the discovery of Metasequoia by H. H. Hu was published in English (Hu 1948).All these literature sources have been cited again and again worldwide .Unfortunately, not all of the information in these papers is accurate (Ma 2003a, b).
In the summer of 1948.two additional expedition teams arrived at Metasequoia Valley, Lichuan .The team led by W. C. Cheng from the National Central University studied mainly the ecology and vegetation (Cheng and Chu 1949;Chu and Cooper 1950) .The other team, organized jointly by the California Academy of Sciences and Lingnan University Dawn Redwood Expedition, focused on insects as well as other animals but also brought back Metasequoia seeds that were sent to the West Coast of the United States (Gressitt 1953;Silverman 1990).This was the last expedition to Metasequoia Valley from outside China after the new People's Republic of China was founded in 1949 because no permission was gi ven to foreigners to visit there until 30 years later (Bartholomew et al. 1983).

CONFUSION
After the news spread regarding the discovery of Metasequoia, Professor Toh Kan of the National Central University told W. C. Cheng that he had seen the tree in the winter of 1941 and collected a specimen but never conserved or identified it (Keng and Hsueh 1948 ; y.Zhang 1981-the original copy is in the archives of Plants, Beijing; Chinese).Wan-Chun Cheng cited T. Kan's role in his first manuscript on the discovery of Metasequoia.However, W. C. Cheng's manuscript was not published until after his death in 1984 in a popular magazine (Cheng 1984).In his later years, W. C. Cheng did not fully accept T. Kan's role, though he had been the first to mention Kan's contribution in his manuscript.From 1949 to 1979, there had been no arguments about the discovery of Metasequoia in the botanical history of China for political reasons.However, after 1979 when China opened her doors to the world, W. C. Cheng began to doubt T. Kan's role in the discovery because L. H. Yang denied T. Kan's claim of having collected for him.This doubt was recorded in the letters to C. J. Hsueh and C. Wang (Ma 2003a, b) .Because there was no specimen left by T. Kan, W. C. Cheng wrote a letter to T. Kan's widow, PeiZhen Zuo, regarding T. Kan's true role (G.Q. Wang 1999).At the same time, W. C. Cheng became involved in the production of the first Chinese documentary film about Metasequoia.As consultant of the film, absolute authority on Chinese conifers at that time, and co-author of the description of living Metasequoia, W. C. Cheng did not put T. Kan's picture in the film since his role could not be resolved (c.Wang 1981;Zhang 1981) (Hu 1948) had errors because W. C. Cheng's original information was inaccurate (Ma 2003a, b) .For example, the seed collector, C. T. Hwa, was wrongly recorded as C. J. Hsueh, and T. Kan's role was introduced by H. H. Hu after W. C. Cheng's primary account (Cheng 1984;Hu 1948).
Even before W. C. Cheng died in 1983, L. H. Yang, C. J. Hsueh and C. Wang communicated many times regarding the true story.More than ten personal letters between them have been collected by the author but were never published in the Chinese botanical literature, although some of them are cited in Ma (2003a).The debate on who was involved in the discovery of Metasequoia continues to this day (c.K. Wang 1981 ; G. Q. Wang 1999;Shao et al. 2000).

SEARCHING FOR THE ORIGINAL SPECIMEN
After the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the story of the discovery and collection of Metasequoia was ignored in the botanical history of China until 1979. In particular, between 1943and 2003, no clear mention is made of the first collection of Metasequoia made by C. Wang in 1943 .Yet it was this key collection that had sparked W. C. Cheng's curiosity about an unusual new conifer.Moreover, no photographs of the original specimen were known to exist anywhere in the world.
Reports on Metasequoia indicate that the first specimen was located at Jiangsu Forestry Academy (JFA; the former National Bureau of Forest Research) at Nanjing, Jiangsu , China .Why did it take so long to gain access to the first specimen?First, nearly all botanists and forest scientists there were unaware of this important collection, and basic research on botanical history lacks primary support in China.Second, many research materials and/or documents, including original field collection records, diaries, expedition and research reports, old manuscripts and scientific communications, including letters regarding this tree, were destroyed or went missing during the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976.Third, major persons who were part of the discovery had all passed away by 2000 when I began my search.Finally, long distance communication between the U.S.A. and China was inefficient compared to personal interviews.
The most encouraging information I finally received was that the specimen had been locked in the office of the former director of JFA.During the summer of 2002, I attended the First International Metasequoia Symposium in Wuhan, Hubei.After the symposium and a field trip to Metasequoia Valley, I visited several herbaria in Chongqing to search for the original specimen but to no avail.I then went to Nanjing.Thanks to the help of several colleagues, I finally was able to enter the herbarium at JFA .A staff member told me that the first specimen had been taken away by the former director about 20 years ago due to nationwide debates in the early 1980s.Still, no one knew exactly where the specimen was.With permission, my colleagues and I nonetheless thoroughly searched for the specimen, cabinet by cabinet and folder by folder.All the specimens, estimated to be about 8000-10,000 sheets, were stored without any order.Finally, at the bottom of an old cabinet, I saw a dusty pile of specimens with C. Wang's collection # 118 at the top without a cover folder!The first specimen of Metasequoia was found!This sheet was supposed to be among less than ten sheets collected by C. Wang with this number (c.Wang 1948 ;Lu 1986).It could not be the one given to W. C. Cheng, nor the one reportedly taken away by the JFA director about 20 years ago.The location of the remaining sheets bearing this number is still unknown.Sadly, the condition of this invaluable specimen was poor but the notes were typed and legible: Chinese Name: Shui Song (i.e., water pine), Scientific Name : Glyptostrobus pensilis Koch, Collector: C. Wang, no. 118, Date: 7-21-'43 (i.e ., 21 July 1943), Location: Modaoxi, Wan Xian, Sichuan.Among these details, the Chinese name of this specimen and the collection locality were handwritten by C. Wang six decades ago (Ma and Shao 2003).

THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SEEDS
Around Christmas of 1947, W. C. Cheng from Nanjing sent out his first consignment of seeds to the Arnold Arboretum.However, these were not the only seeds sent out from China.Even before the Arnold Arboretum received its first batch, W. C. Cheng had also sent seeds to other provinces in China, elsewhere in Asia, Europe, as well as other parts of North America.Recipients included the Missouri Botanical Garden (Andrews 1948), Forest Research Institute at Dehra Dun of India (Raizada 1948), botanical gardens in Denmark and the Netherlands (Hendricks and Sondergaard 1998;Satoh 1998Satoh /1999)), and Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, U .K ., arriving around late 1947 or early 1948.However, for various reasons, not all of the original letters and documents could be found in China (Ma 2003a, b), and so far little information is available on how the seeds were introduced throughout the rest of the world (Andrews 1948;Raizada 1948;Florin 1952;Wyman 1953;Dupouy 1955;Evinger 1957;Gorrie 1965;Fulling 1976;Saito 1995;Hendricks and Sondergaard 1998 ;Satoh 1998Satoh /1999;;Zhang 2000) (Cronquist 1977), and to the Earl of Rosse at Birr Castle, Ireland (Nelson 1998).
Merrill always denied that Chaney had returned from China with seeds of Metasequoia (Fulling 1976;Wagner 2003), e ven though several lines of evidence suggest otherwise (Ma 2003a, b).First, according to my personal interview with C. T.  (Ma 2003a, b).
From the sources av ailable to me, it is clear that the species has been successfully cultivated (reaching tree height) in much of the USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 5-8 in North America, from Hamilton (Ontario), Syracuse (New York), and Boston (Massachusetts) , to Atlanta (Georgia), Baton Rouge (Louisiana), and Huntsville (A labama) on the East Coast, and from Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) to Los Angeles (California) on the West Coast (Kuser 1998(Kuser , 1999)), and even to Mexico (Martinez 1957) learned of a strange tree and changed his itinerary to see it.He collected the first specimen, identified it, and provided a specimen for further identification.It was W. C. Cheng who first realized that C. Wang's identification of the tree as Glyptostrobus pensilis was wrong.Wan-Chun Cheng then sent C. J .Hsueh to make additional collections.After making sure it was new, W. C. Cheng did not rush to publish the new taxon, but as ked H. H. Hu for further comments.Finally, W. C. Cheng sent C. T. Hwa on another expedition, not only to collect the seeds, but also to find the original native distribution center.It is H. H. Hu who must be c redited for matching the living specimen with the fossil described by S. Miki in 1941, whereby H. H. Hu's reputation and that of his institution made it possible for them to have S .Miki 's paper on hand.Finally, Shu-Hsia Fu's contribution was to make Hu aware of Miki's paper, leading to the correct identification.
Smaller, but nonetheless significant roles were played by the local residents and others who were aware of the "unknown tree"; Lung-Hsing Yang, who informed C. Wang that the tree existed ; Chung-Lun Wu , who took

Fig
Fig .I.-Ty pe tree of Met asequoia glyp tostro bo ides grow ing in Moud ao, Lichu an .Hube i. Th is tree is ca .400 years o ld and measures ab out 35 m in he ight and 2.4 m in d iam et er.Photograph by author, 24 Se ptember 2003.

Fig. 2 .
Fig. 2.-High est tree of Me tasequoia glyptos tro bo ides see n growing in Lubeiba.Xia oh e, Lichu an , Hubei .Thi s spec ime n is ca.400 years old .and mea sures abo ut 40 m in height a nd 2.3 m in diam eter.Photograph by auth or.23 Sept ember 2003 .
, as well as much of Europe in the same hardiness zones.In China, this native spec ies has been successfully cultivated in most parts of north, central a nd eastern China (25-42°N and 125-103°E; Zhang 2000), from Shenyang of Liaoning Province in the northeast to Kunming of Yunnan Province in the southwest, and from Xian of Shaanxi Province and Chengdu of Si chuan Province in the west to the ea stern and southeastern coast of China, and from Li aoning in the north to Hong Kong in the south.It has al so shown excellent growth in the middle and lower Yangtze River areas in central and eastern China .CONCLUSION Not a single individual but collaboration among several Chinese scientists led to the discovery of Metasequoia glyptostroboides.It was C. Wang who first Wang 's specimen to W. C. Cheng; Chi-Ju Hsueh a nd C. T. Hwa, the type collectors (male a nd female strobili); and C. T. Hwa, who made the first seed collections and located the original Metasequoia Valley in 1947.Who introduced the seeds of Metasequoia into the United St ate s and the world ?The introduction of Metasequoia seeds was facilitated by the work of Chinese and American scientists.Chinese participants included W. C. Cheng of the National Central University at Nanjing, and H. H. Hu of the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology at Beijing, as well as W. C. Cheng's assistant and the seed collector, C. T. Hwa.Elmer Drew Merrill and the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University played a leading role in the introduction of seeds outside China.The Arnold Arboretum supported seed collecting activities and later redistributed seeds around the world.Several Chinese scientists se nt seeds to other institutions in North America, Europe as well as in Asia.Ralph Works Chaney of the University of California, Berkeley, also participated, not only by traveling to the Metasequoia Valley in the early spring of 1948, but also through his co ntributio n to re search and redistribution of the seeds on the west coast of the United States.Chaney brought back seeds with him when he returned from China in the early sp ring of 1948 (Silverman 1990).From the correspondence between scientists in China and in the United States, we now know that E. D. Merrill at the Arnold Arboretum received seed s at least four times directly from W. C. Cheng at Nanjing and at least once from R. W. Chaney at Berkeley upon his return from China.Merrill also received seeds from H . H . Hu at Beijing (letters at BLHU and AUO).Thus, the introduction of seeds outside China and the United States was implemented in large part by Chinese scientists (Ma 2003a, b) and E. D. Merrill.
. At this time, W. C. Cheng confirmed that this was indeed a new taxon.
, both W. C. Cheng at Nanjing and H. H. Hu at Beijing co m munica ted with Dr. Elme r Drew Me rrill, then the director of the Arn old Arboretum of Harvard Uni versity (letter s held at the Botanical Libr ary of Harv ard University ; BLHU) .As a worldwide autho rity on Asi an plants, E. D. Menill was contacted regul arly by Chinese sc ho lars, including W. C. Cheng and H. H. Hu, e ven before his career at the Arnold Arb o retum .Afte r Merrill received a M etasequoia spe cimen in late 1946 (exact date of receipt not ava ilabl e ) a nd again in the summer o f 1947, he did his best to support Chinese sc ie ntists interested in co llecting Metasequ oia seeds.Just as he had done be fore with other co llecting m issions he sent money to C hina and had s pec ime ns se nt back to the U nited Stat es.With his critical help, a fund of $25 0 (equivalent to about 9,750,000 Yuan [Chinese Currency] based o n the wartime e xc ha nge rate ), wa s set up for a see d collectin g exped ition (Fulling 1976 ).Later that sa me year the seed s were collected by C. T. Hwa.By C hr istmas of 1947, Metasequoia seeds were se nt out of C hina.The first Shi pme nt arri ved at the Arn old Arb oretum just a fe w days after the new yea r in 1948 (Me rrill 1948a .May 1946, from Dr. H. H. Hu regarding the living Metasequoia in China (letter at the Archives of the University of Oregon, AUO), he immediately realized that this was a very important discovery for paleobotany and botany alike.He helped spread this exciting news in the spring of 1947 (Anonymous 1947 ; Chaney b).Wh en Dr. Ralph Works Chaney, then Director of the Department of Paleontology at the Univ er sity of Californi a. Berkeley, go t ne ws in a letter dated 9 (Fulling 1976g's first collection in 1943 was mentioned in the film (c.Wang 1981).Unfortunately, W. C. Cheng's change of heart in the 1980s was too late because the original publications(Hu 1948; Cheng 1984)had been continuously cited for several decades, not only in the Chinese literature but worldwide in many different languages(Fulling 1976; C. K. Wang 1981; G. Q. Wang 1999).At the time when the living species of Metasequoia was found in China, W. C. Cheng was in Chongqing (before June 1946) and then in Nanjing (after June 1946); but H. H. Hu was in Nanchang, Jiangsi Province (before October 1946, except for a short time in Beijing from the middle of April to the end of May 1946) and then in Beijing (after October 1946).Most of the persons who were involved in the discovery of Metasequoia lived in Chongqing and Nanjing, including C. J. Hsueh and C. T. Hwa, the type and seed collectors.Since H. H. Hu lived neither in Nanjing nor Chongqing, and received the information from W. C.
. Additionally, H. H. Hu from Beijing sent seeds not only to E. D. Merrill at the Arnold Arboretum, but also to Dr. T. H. Goodspeed (according to H. H. Hu and R. W. Chaney's communication, Dr. Goodspeed had asked R. W. Chaney to write to H. H. Hu for seeds) at the University of California Botanical Garden, Berkeley Hwa at Beijing in the summer of 2002, W. C. Cheng still had some Metasequoia seeds in his possession that were collected by C. T. Hwa in the autumn preceding R. W. Chaney's visit to China (spring of 1948).It is these seeds that R .W. Chaney brought back (Silverman 1990).Merrill's refusal to credit Chaney with collecting seeds m ay stem from the fact th at Chaney's seeds were not a new batch but part of the same consignment collected previously with funding procured by Merrill.In traveling to China, Chaney was given credit for introducing the seeds, even though the seeds were already widely distributed by Chinese botanists.Second, as is evident from a letter W. C. Cheng sent to E. D .Merrill, W. C. Cheng asked R. W. Chaney to br ing back seeds for E. D .Merrill (M a 2003a ; W. C. Cheng's letter to E. D. Merrill on 20 April 1948 at BLHU).This request, however, was never recorded in the botanical history of Metasequoia until M arch 2003 when I found their correspondence in the Harv ard University Herbaria