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At the XIX International Botanical Congress held in Shenzhen, China, in July 2017, the delegates unanimously adopted the Shenzhen Declaration on Plant Sciences in an effort to accelerate the contributions made by plant scientists for the benefit of the world′s changing society. This paper discusses what has been accomplished concerning plant conservation since the Shenzhen Declaration. Beyond the problems we faced in 2017, the global Covid pandemic and the war have presented new challenges. With the massive ecological overshoot, the number of malnourished people globally has increased. Most threats to vascular plants have increased generally over these 6 years, while the responses of the botanical community to them have continued to proceed at a relatively slow pace. Although international cooperation is needed to combat the grave challenges we face, the ease of such collaboration has decreased substantially in recent years. Certainly, rapid deforestation, especially in the tropics, and our ineffective approaches to mitigate climate change will lessen the effectiveness of our strategies to slow extinction. Indeed, our blindness to the reality of ecological overshoot and misperceptions concerning sustainability are accelerating extinction and thus destabilizing social structures and civilization. As an example, conservation in China faces serious challenges with biodiversity loss, but botanical gardens and seed banks there offer hope on ex situ conservation. The botanical and other scientific communities can contribute by drawing the attention of fellow citizens to the gravity of the problems that we face and by being actively engaged in providing solutions and carrying them forward to action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The correspondence exchanged between Captain John Blake, John Bradby Blake, and their associates offers a valuable insight into the sociable world of Enlightenment botany. By considering these sources alongside the records of other contemporary scholars of botany, this paper examines the composition of the community of plant collectors and botanical scholars with whom father and son were interacting in the 1760s and 1770s. The documents also reveal the ways in which botanical knowledge circulated among the members of these communities. Amateur botany, it turns out, was deeply linked to gardening and to the emerging trade in horticultural plants, yet the contributions made by gardeners and nurserymen have been largely overlooked. In sum, the Blake collection at Oak Spring helps to answer larger questions about the nature of Enlightenment sociability, about diversity within botanical networks, and about the ways in which that social diversity affected botanical collecting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Bradby Blake (1745–1773) first visited Canton as a supercargo for the British East India Company in 1767/68. He returned as a resident supercargo in July 1769. Between then and his untimely death in 1773, in collaboration with one or more Chinese artists, he produced over 150 paintings of Chinese plants, many of which are illustrated in exquisite botanical detail. These paintings and the associated archives in the Oak Spring Garden Library at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) provide a detailed glimpse into an interesting life and a previously little known dimension of the social and scientific interactions between the British and Chinese in the late 18th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A biography of Wu Sugong, a professor of Botany and one of the best pteridologists in China is presented. He was born on July 13, 1935 in China and studied botany under professor Ching Renchang. He is also a noted plant explorer and an expert on Himalayan floristics and alpine plants. He and his second wife professor Fang Ruizheng have a strong relationship and supported each others work. His expeditions contributed to Chinese biological research programs.

In 1934, during twenty-eight years of wandering west China, the American botanist Joseph Francis Charles Rock made a brief trip to England. He clipped the obituary of an old friend from the Times and pasted it in his diary. On the facing page, he pasted a photograph two decades old, and wrote this caption:J. F. Rock (standing) with his older friend Fred Muir, Entomologist at the Haw[aii] Sugar Planter's Exp[eriment] Sta[tion], Honolulu. Photographed in our home in Liloa Rise (Breaside), Honolulu in the spring of 1913, while our phonograph played Spiritu Gentile, Caruso singing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Perspectives of diverse constituencies need to be incorporated when developing conservation strategies. In Menri (Medicine Mountains) of the Eastern Himalayas, Tibetan doctors and professional botanists were interviewed about conservation of useful plants. We compare these two perspectives and find they differ significantly in conservation priorities (Wilcoxon Signed Ranks P < 0.05), both in how they prioritized, as well as the priorities themselves. Tibetan doctors first consider which plants are most important to their medical practice and, then secondarily, the conservation status of these plants. Additionally, perceptions of threatened medicinal plants differ among Tibetan doctors who received medical training in Lhasa, who were local trained, and who were self-taught. In contrast, professional botanists came to a consensus among themselves by first considering the conservation status of plants and then considering use. We conclude that, in order to effect community based conservation, opinions from both Tibetan doctors and professional botanists should be considered in establishing conservation priorities and sustainable conservation programs. Furthermore, we set our own research agenda based on combined perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the efforts of British botanical explorer, Frank Kingdon-Ward, to study the borderlands of Burma, China and Tibet immediately before the Great War and in the interwar period. Career history of Kingdon-Ward; Textual practices of the explorer in documenting his findings; Instrumental symbiosis between science and empire focused on by most natural historians; Contributions of Kingdon-Ward to the field of botanical exploration.

Profiles Dr. Hsen-Hsu Hu, founder of modern plant taxonomy in China. Family and early life; Educational background; Achievements.

The article presents the author's views on plant physiology research in China. The author says that plant physiology research grew rapidly in New China after an initial lull of a few years. The author further says that rapid increase in the number and activities of plant physiologists culminated in the establishment of the Chinese Society of Plant Physiologists in 1963 and the first publication of its official organ, Acta Phytophysiologica Sinica, the following year.

The article reports that a delegation of botanists under the leadership of Arthur W. Galston of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut went to China. The delegation engendered a great deal of good will among plant scientists, and prompted the 1977 invitation by the Chinese Science and Technology Association to the Botanical Society of America. The delegation was the guest of the Chinese scientific community between May 20-June 18, 1978 to visit eight cities including Canton, Kunming, Shanghai, Soochow, Hangchow, Nanking, Wuhan and Peking. Activities included visits to botanical institutes, arboreta, universities, agricultural academies and other research institutes of special interest.

Narrates the visit of a Royal Botanic Gardens botanist to China, as a guest of Academia Sinica. Reestablishment of botanical links with China; Trip to Southern China via Hong Kong; Observation of medicinal plants, trade fairs and agricultural communes; Lecture on botanical gardens; Stops in Peking and Kweilin; Visits to the Botanical Institute, botanic gardens and herbaria.

The article examines the legality behind a proposal to conserve the name Malus domestica which is the commonly used name by botanists and horticulturists for cultivated apple. It states that apples that originate in China were called as a subspecies of M. domestica based on the study of Y. N. Li. It mentions that the study of Ku and Spongberg presents that M. domestica needs to be conserved to serve as a term for the cultivated apple rather than the other terms such as Malu pumila.

Highlights from the article: I This story introduces i Science I 's CRISPR in China series, supported by the Pulitzer Center. i Although the United States has had the most CRISPR publications - and continues to have the most cited papers - China is now a close second and is pouring money into CRISPR's uses.

The article focuses on the efforts made by China to prevent unauthorized use of Global Positioning System (GPS) and meteorological surveying equipment by foreign researchers. Various laws have been passed in the country which restrict environmental monitoring and use of GPS equipment. These laws affect geologists, botanists, environmental scientists and meteorologists. New laws governing data collection were introduced in the year 2007 to protect national security. They included the Measures for the Administration of Foreign-related Meteorological Sounding and Information.

The article reports on the orchid that botanists had considered very valuable which was showed at an orchid show in Shaoxing, China. This orchid which is known as Oriental cymbidium was sold for $175,000 or equivalent to 1.35 million yuan. According to William Rhodehamel of the Hoosier Orchid Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana, orchids in China are comparable to Dutch tulip bulbs in the 17th century. The Chinese export most of the 1,200 native orchid species. Botanist Holger Perner claimed that dealers will speculate with super cymbidiums and they will buy specimen as the price is increasing of the multiplying plant.

This article informs that China is home to more than 31,000 species of vascular plants, more than any country except Brazil and Colombia. More than half of Chinese vascular plant species are found nowhere else, including many, such as Ginkgo and Metasequoia, which were once widespread around the Northern Hemisphere, but now survive only in China. After 1978, Chinese botanists resumed and greatly accelerated their efforts, with major financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Ministry of Science and Technology. Finally, after 45 years of extraordinary effort by 312 Chinese botanists representing four generations, the Flora has been completed. It consists of 126 books, which constitute 80 volumes; it includes 31,141 species, 3407 genera, and 300 families of vascular plants. Although FRPS provides an important step forward for the knowledge of Chinese plants, it is based on a relatively short period of study by the nation's botanists.

The article presents information about the publication titled "Botany in China: Report of the Botanical Society of America Delegation to the People's Republic, May 20-June 18, 1978," edited by Anitra Thorhaug. The publication summarizes the journey of 10 American botanists in China. It addresses features of the trip, a brief commentary on the organizational aspects of Chinese botany, the major research directions in the discipline areas familiar to the American team, and concise descriptions of the institutions visited in eight cities. The last section of the publication includes 36 institutions, gardens and academic facilities of China.