Metasequoia glyptostroboides-Its Status in Central China in 1980 (1983)

After the success of the Communist revolution in 1949, China closed its boundaries to Westerners, ending collaboration between Chinese and American botanists until the 1970s. With the invitation in 1978 to a delegation of American botanists to visit the People’s Republic of China, ties broken three decades earlier were renewed. After the month-long visit, the Americans in turn invited their Chinese colleagues to visit the United States the next year. During that visit plans were made for a collaborative expedition to western Hubei Provincethe 1980 Sino-American Botanical Expedition-conducted under the auspices of Academia Sinica and the Botanical Society of America.* As members of that expedition, the authors of this report did fieldwork in western Hubei Province in the late summer and early fall of 1980. Most of their time was spent in the Shennongjia Forest District, but they also made a brief visit, October 5 to 10, to the region where Metasequoia still grows wild, the first foreigners to visit since 1948.