HU, METASEQUOIA FLORA THE METASEQUOIA L()ORA AND ITS PHYTOGEOGRAPHIC SI(NIFICANCE SHIU YIN(; Hu MY FIRST ASSO(CIATION with Metasequoia grlptostroboides Hu & Cheng was at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University during the winter of 1948 1949. At that time help was needed to place fresh, recently imported metasequoia seed into small envelopes for distribution to botanical institutions, forest experiment stations, and interested individuals around the world. These seeds. mailed from Nanking, China, on November 29, 1948, and totaling 500 grams, were the second shipment received at the Arnold Arboretum. A letter from Professor W. C. Cheng concerning the shipment was later placed with the unmounted specimens of M. glyptostrohoides that had been collected during the summer of 1948. In addition to the seed, five shipments of herbarium specimens collected in southwestern Hupeh Province between 1946 and 1948 were received at the Arnold Arboretum by the late Professor Elmer D. Merrill. In 1973 this herbarium material was turned over to me for identification, and this article is concerned with the information resulting from that undertaking. A systematic enumeration of all identifiable species represented in the five collections (an assemblage of species here termed the "metasequoia flora") is presented below. While the type locality of Metasequoia glvptostrohoides is in eastern Szechwan, the specimens on which this work is based are from the general area (here referred to as the "metasequoia area") in Hupeh Province where M. glvptostroboides was later discovered growing in a natural population (see below). Also included are brief summaries of the expeditions that obtained the five collections, as well as a short account of earlier botanical collections from Central China, a description of the salient features of the metasequoia flora, an analysis of the gymnosperms that occur with metasequoia, and my interpretation of the metasequoia flora. In 1950 K. L. Chu and W. S. Cooper published the results of an ecological reconnaissance of the metasequoia community. A posthumously published paper by E. H. Fulling (1976), along with additions published in 1977, summarizes the history of the discovery of Metasequoia glyptostrohoides and presents an annotated bibliography of published references to metasequoia. Only information not available in these three readily available articles is included here. In the enumeration of species, the system followed in the arrangementof the families conforms with that used in Iconographia CormophytorumSinicorum (Anonymous, 1972 1976). For economy of space, and unless � President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1980. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 61: 41-94. January, 1980.1980]
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