Abstract:

A draft of this article was hand-written by the authors after September in 1980, which has not been uncovered until recently. It is now being published as a piece of their posthumous work. The article reviews the discovery of Metasequoia glyptostroboides. Chan Wang collected the first specimen of the species in 1943 based on the information obtained from a classmate of him. The specimen resembled Glyptostrobus pensilis but differed from it in some aspects, and hence Chan Wang thought that it was possibly a new species. However, due to the lack of reference materials at that time, he could not precisely determine its taxonomic status. Then Chan Wang asked Wan-Chun Cheng for help to identify the specimen, and Wan-Chun Cheng identified it as a new species. The new species was jointly published by Hsen-Hsu Hu and Wan-Chun Cheng. As to Tuo Kan, he had never investigated the species. It is purely a fabricated story made by Tuo Kan that he discovered the species and once had a specimen of it collected before Chan Wang; the discovery and publication of Metasequoia glyptostroboides had nothing to do with Tuo Kan.

Key words: Chan Wang, Wan-Chun Cheng, Tuo Kan