Cheng visited NBFR to examine other parts of the collected specimen. Wan-Chun Cheng, (Wanjunn Zheng, 1904-1983) a dendrology professor at NCU who immediately realized it was not Glyptostrobus but something new. Two years later, in 1945, Chan Wang gave part of his specimen including two cones to a teaching assistant from the National Central University (NCU) in Chongqing. Chan Wang (Zhang Wang, 1910-2000), chanced upon a deciduous, coniferous trees near a village, Moudao (Mo-tao-chi), in Sichuan Province (now administered by Hubei Province), he collected a specimen which he later identified as Glyptostrobus pensilis (Swamp Cypress), a common deciduous conifer in south China. In 1943, a Chinese forester from the National Bureau of Forest Research (NBFR) in Chongqing (Nanking), Mr. This publication was essentially unknown to Western scientists until after the World War II. The fossils had previously been confused with Taxodium (bald cypress) and Sequoia (redwoods). In 1941 Shigeru Miki (1903-1974), a Japanese paleobotanist, established a new genus, Metasequoia, to accommodate Pliocene fossils from deposits about five million years old. The account of the discovery and subsequent activities has since been updated and corrected by Jinshuang Ma in two publication, Aliso 21(2) :65-75(2002) and Harvard Papers in Botany 8(1):9-18 (2003) The Story of the Discovery and Naming of Dawn RedwoodĪn excellent description of the discovery of Metasequoia glyptostroboides by scientists in the 1940s is in, A Reunion of Trees, by Stephen A.
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