On April 18, the much-anticipated "National Botanical Garden" was officially unveiled in Beijing.
And one of them cannot fail to mention that, according to the newly discovered historical material, it was he who advanced the starting point of the establishment of the "National Botanical Garden" by a full 60 years.
The Metasequoia forest is located in the Cherry Ditch of Beijing Botanical Garden. There is a Metasequoia pavilion in the ditch, and the rock wall on the side of the pavilion is engraved with the "Metasequoia Song" by Hu Xianhua. In 1946, Hu Xianhua and Zheng Wanjun discovered the "living fossil" Metasequoia, and hu Xianhua planned to build the "Metasequoia National Park", but this wish was not realized in the Beijing Botanical Garden until after his death
In the 1920s and 1940s, academia Sinica, the highest academic institution in modern China, brought together leading figures from various disciplines. At previous annual meetings, they have put forward many proposals for the development of Chinese science. The famous botanist and founder of Chinese plant taxonomy, Hu Xianhua (1894-1968), was an active member of academia Sinica. In the archives of China's Second Historical Archive, at least nine of Hu Xianhua's proposals have been found. The newly discovered "Case for the Establishment of the Institute of Economic Botany and the Central Botanical Garden" proposed by Hu Xianhua at the second annual meeting of the Second Council of the Academia Sinica in March 1944 is the earliest official proposal for the establishment of a national botanical garden so far.
Establishment of the Institute of Economic Botany and the Central Botanical Garden
Reason: Plants are the main resources of agriculture and industry, and the rich variety of plants in China is not enough to be counted without being developers. There are large-scale research institutes and botanical gardens in Europe and the United States to engage in the research and cultivation of this plant, the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew and its various territories in England, the salty responsibility for the research and cultivation of economic plants, the eraser industry of British Malays, the tea industry of Ceylon, etc., all of which are facilitated by these botanical institutions. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Plant Import Bureau, which is also large, sends a large number of experts abroad every year to explore the import of plants of economic value. The same is true of Soviet Russia, in order to establish agriculture in the Arctic Circle, the Soviet Union sent people to the Andes Mountains of South America to find new varieties of special hardy potatoes, and the Economic Plant Research Institute it established had up to 5,000 assistants, and its scale was unimaginable, and even large-scale special crop research institutes, such as soybean research institutes, collected and tested soybeans produced by china, up to more than 5,000 kinds. The Dutch East Indies also have the Tea Industry Research Institute, the Rubber Research Institute, the Cinchona Research Institute, etc., and the spirit of the people who attach importance to economic plant research can be imagined. Although the Academia Sinica has established a Botanical Research Institute, the scope of botany is so vast that pure science and applied science must not be taken into account, so there is a need to establish a separate Institute of Economic Botany. The botanical garden is the place for cultivating various economic plants, and it is advisable to set up a central botanical garden in an appropriate and large area, and set up branches of gardens at different latitudes or heights, which can be established in conjunction with or separated from the Institute of Economic Plants.
The "proposers" of this proposal were Hu Xianhua, and the two "deputy signatories" were the mycologist Dai Fanglan (1893-1973) and the zoologist Wang Jiayu (1898-1976). In the winter of 1943, before the proposal was born, the Institute of Animals and Botany of the Academia Sinica proposed to separate the Institute of Zoology and the Institute of Botany, with Wang Jiayu and Luo Zongluo (1898-1978) as directors. The Institute of Botany proposes to administer the Laboratory of Higher Plant Taxonomy, the Laboratory of Plant Physiology and the Laboratory of Algae. But Hu argues that the plan did not give enough attention to "economic botany."
A photograph of Hu Xianhua while studying abroad at Harvard, taken in 1925. Hu Xianhua, one of the pioneers of plant taxonomy in China, first proposed the dream of building a national botanical garden in China
Hu Xianhua has been calling for an emphasis on economic plants since the 1920s. Economic plants are an important resource of industry and agriculture and the lifeblood of national development. Not only do the plant resources that have been applied still need to be further studied, but as one of the countries with the richest plant species in the world, China still has a large number of wild plant resources of economic value that have not been recognized. He said: "At a time when everything needs to be scientific, we should study the methods of improving the cultivation of economic plants that have been used so that they can achieve the highest results; for unused economic plants, we should investigate and promote them, so that the productive capacity of the people can be improved and the country's wealth sources can be increased." "We can start from the following three points: "First, advocate the collection of plants; second, import foreign useful plants; third, set up large-scale botanical gardens to import and test domestic wild useful plants." "Botanical gardens are important towns for cultivating, protecting and studying economic plants. Rubber, tea, cinchona and other plants that affect the development of the world economy, the earliest introduction and research are done in the botanical garden.
From the perspective of the national economy, Hu Xianhua's proposal proposes to refer to the precedents of Europe, the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries, and promote the key research of economic plants on the mainland by setting up economic plant research institutions and "central botanical gardens and sub-gardens".
Dream
The establishment of a national botanical garden system with the Central Botanical Garden as the center, supplemented by local sub-gardens, and taking into account pure science and applied science is not only the vision of China's botanical development after the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression planned by Hu Xianhua, but also the long-cherished wish to establish China's own botanical garden buried in Hu Xianhua's heart for a long time.
In the autumn of 1923, Hu Xianhua went to the United States for the second time to study for a doctorate at Harvard University. Harvard University has many world botany authorities, a large number of Chinese plant specimens and the world-renowned Arnold Arboretum. At that time Chinese wanted to study Chinese plants but had to go to a foreign country, which was "a shame for the country" for Hu Xianhua. He aspires to return to China to create his own botanical garden after completing his studies.
Founded in 1872 in 1872 in the 1920s, the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, located in the Jamaica Plains and Roslindell District of Boston, Massachusetts, was the oldest public botanical garden in North America, and in 1926, Hu xianhua managed to raise funds from home and abroad to build a botanical garden in Nanjing. The proposed botanical garden is located next to the Ming Tomb in Nanjing, near the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. However, the plan was initially operational and was abandoned by the Northern Expedition, which began in July 1926
In October 1928, Hu Xianhua and Bingzhi founded the Jingsheng Biological Survey Institute in Beiping, and immediately began to plan the establishment of a botanical garden. In 1929, Hu Xianhua went to the Hong Kong Botanical Garden and the Java Bogor Botanical Garden, the largest botanical garden in Asia at that time, to learn about the experience of the garden. In October 1930, Hu Xianhua proposed to the Committee of the Jingsheng Institute a plan and budget for the establishment of the "Xishan Botanical Garden" at Vulture Peak in the western suburbs of Beiping. However, the committee rejected Hu Xianhua's plan, arguing that Jingsheng had not been established for a long time, and that the plan for the "Xishan Botanical Garden" was too ambitious and should be planned later.
Group photo taken in 1928 when the Shizuoka Biological Survey was founded. In the front row, from left, are He Qi, Bingzhi, Hu Xianhua, and Shou Zhenhuang; from the left in the back row, shen Jiarui, Feng Chengru, and Tang Jin. In October 1928, Hu Xianhua and Bingzhi founded the Institute of Static Biological Survey, the earliest and most accomplished biological research institution in modern China, in Beiping, which is the predecessor of the Institute of Zoology and Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
In 1931, Hu Xianhua went to Lushan Mountain, Jiangxi Province. A native of Nanchang, Hu Xianhua served as deputy director of the Lushan Forestry Bureau in Jiangxi Province after returning to China for the first time in the United States in 1917. Revisiting the old place this time, he not only made a detailed investigation of the plants of Lushan, but also began to examine Lushan with the eyes of building a botanical garden. He found that although the Lushan area has been over-logged for many years, there are very few plant species, and most of the province of Jiangxi is also "a child-like elephant", but the climate and soil conditions of Lushan are conducive to the introduction and domestication of alpine plants, and the cultural tradition and political status of Lushan are more conducive to attracting the public and the prosperity and development of botanical gardens.
Hu Xianhua (left) and Hu Shi, Hu Xianhua Xiao Hu Shi is 3 years old, the two have been in contact during their study in the United States, although they have opposed views, but have always maintained friendship
In January 1933, Hu Xianhua officially proposed to build a botanical garden in Lushan. By this time, northern China was under threat from Japanese militarism. Lushan, as envisioned by Hu Xianhua, is not only a botanical garden, but also lays a "foundation for future migration" for scientific research institutions in advance under the circumstance that "the situation in North China is difficult to be optimistic". But Hu's vision of the Japanese threat was not recognized by others, and the Lushan Botanical Garden's proposal was not accepted.
In the summer of 1933, Hu Xianhua instructed Lu Zuofu's Western Academy of Sciences to establish the "Botanical Garden of the Western Academy of Sciences". Hu Xianhua sighed: "The author intends to create a botanical garden in Beiping, which has been in Zizi for several years, and has not yet raised an eyebrow. Botanical gardens thousands of miles away under the guidance of the author can be achieved in a short period of time, which shows that under the leadership of appropriate leaders, Pepsi is easy to achieve. ”
In December 1933, Hu Xianhua, who would never accept defeat, used his influence to lobby the Jiangxi Provincial Bureau of Agriculture to participate in the construction of the Lushan Botanical Garden, and mediated with many parties, and finally won the support of all parties. With hard work, the "Lushan Forest Botanical Garden" (today's Lushan Botanical Garden) was officially established in August 1934. This is the first botanical garden built by Hu Xianhua after eight years of repeated defeats.
Lushan Botanical Garden, originally the "Lushan Forest Botanical Garden" established in August 1934, is also the first botanical garden supported by Hu Xianhua
Lushan Forest Botanical Garden is modeled after the Royal Botanical Garden, Kew Gardens, and aims to build a world-class botanical garden with scientific standards. Hu Xianhua appointed Qin Renchang (1898-1986), director of the Herbarium of the Jingsheng Institute and fern botanist, as the first director of the Lushan Botanical Garden. In just a few years from 1934 to 1938, the self-made Lushan Forest Botanical Garden achieved dazzling results: it established an extensive seed exchange system with domestic and foreign botanical research institutions, carried out plant resource surveys, collected and cultivated more than 3,100 species of plants; opened up special parks such as herbaceous plant areas, stone mountain plant areas, and aquatic plant areas on barren mountains, as well as 3 greenhouses and nursery areas with an area of nearly 11 hectares; and established what was then known as "the only complete herbarium in East Asia". It collects more than 50,000 economic plant specimens and more than 20,000 fern specimens. These achievements made the young Lushan Forest Botanical Garden quickly become one of the world's most famous botanical gardens.
With the outbreak of the July 7 Incident in 1937 and the full-scale japanese invasion of China, the thriving Lushan Botanical Garden was occupied and forced to close for eight years (1938-1946). Hu Xianhua in the midst of the war did not give up his dream of a Chinese botanical garden. In 1938, Hu Xianhua established the Yunnan Institute of Agriculture and Forestry Botany in Kunming, and then withdrew the personnel of the Lushan Botanical Garden to Yunnan, and Qin Renchang established the Lijiang Workstation of the Lushan Forest Botanical Garden. Even in 1940, the most arduous year of the War of Resistance Against Japan, Hu Xianhua was raising funds to build a botanical garden for Kunming.
At the end of 1941, the Pacific War broke out, and the Shizusho Institute in Beiping was occupied by the Japanese army, and the Academic Journal of the Shizusei Institute, the Research Report of the Shizusei Biological Survey Institute, was forced to stop publishing. However, Hu Xianhua, who had moved to Jiangxi, actually resumed the publication of the "Report" in 1943, when conditions were extremely difficult. In his preface to the resumption, he wrote: "During these years, all the staff of The Institute of Tranquility have worked hard as in peacetime, and in cooperation with the Royal Horticultural Society, the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh, and the Harvard University Arboretum, they have conducted three consecutive years of botanical and horticultural research in various parts of Yunnan Province. ...... The publication of our first part of the study demonstrates our confidence and is a challenge to our japanese colleagues who hold aggressive ideas. ”
Although the war continued, Hu Xianhua was already thinking about the development strategy of Chinese botany after the victory of the War of Resistance. Looking back on the twenty years of the blue wisps of the Yanlu Road, Hu Xianhua has become more and more aware that if China is to be strong, it must vigorously develop biology: "The scale of biological research must be ten hundred times greater than today, in order to make a great contribution to the founding of the country." ...... The establishment of the Central Biological Survey Institute, the Central Botanical Garden, the Central Entomological Research Institute, and the Central Institute of Economic Research are all key maps for the future scientific construction. In March 1944, Hu Xianhua formally submitted the "Case for the Establishment of the Institute of Economic Botany and the Central Botanical Garden" at the annual meeting of the Council of the Academia Sinica.
Dream break
What is the final result of this proposal?
In December 1944, the "Case for the Establishment of the Institute of Economic Botany and the Central Botanical Garden" was sent to the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry for handling. In January 1945, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry sent a letter to the Academia Sinica: "The chairman of the committee, Hai Jia, sent a telegram to the secretary of the committee, "All the work done by the government is related to the centennial plan, and it cannot be completed in a short period of time... shall, at its discretion, be suspended for post-war processing'. ("Report of the Director General and Secretary of the Second Annual Meeting of the Academia Sinica Council", October 1946, China's Second Historical Archive Collection) Although this case attracted the attention of the National Government, the Central Botanical Garden was a national centennial plan and the cost was extremely huge, and it could only wait until the war to consider the long term. The proposal was thus shelved.
For the dream of being frustrated, Hu Xianhua has long been accustomed to it. In 1946, Hu Xianhua and Zheng Wanjun discovered the "living fossil" Metasequoia, which caused a sensation in the international scientific community, and Hu Xianxiao began to consider the establishment of "Metasequoia National Park". On April 29, 1948, Hu Xianhua wrote to the botanist Jiang Ying: "The Ministry of Education is initiating the establishment of Metasequoia National Park and will organize a national park advisory committee. ...... If Guangdong can establish Luofu Mountain National Park, it is also a great event, while in Guangxi, Yangshuo National Park can be established. On the same day, Hu Xianhua wrote to Ren Hongjun that he had sent the proposed Metasequoia National Park plan to Hang Liwu, Minister of Education, "Guo Cheng is also an important event in China's academic history." In the end, due to the turmoil and insufficient construction funds, the establishment of Metasequoia National Park did not follow. This is the closest Hu Xianhua is to realizing the "Dream of the National Botanical Garden".
But Hu's dream of a Chinese botanical garden has sown its seeds in the hearts of many young botanists. The most prominent of these are Chen Fenghuai (1900-1993), Cai Xitao (1911-1981) and Yu Dejun (1908-1986). Chen Fenghuai was a researcher at the Jingsheng Institute, who was sent by Hu Xianhua to Edinburgh, England to study the gardening of botanical gardens and the classification of alpine flowers primroses, and after returning to China, he opened a rock garden for cultivating alpine flowers in the Lushan Forest Botanical Garden, and served as the director of the Lushan Botanical Garden from 1946 to 1953. Chen Fenghuai started from Lushan, and after 1949, he planned and presided over the Wuhan Botanical Garden and the South China Botanical Garden, and was known as the "father of the botanical garden" of New China. In 1932, Hu Xianhua entrusted Cai Xitao, an intern at the 21-year-old Jingsheng Institute, with a heavy responsibility and sent him to Yunnan to collect tropical plants. Cai Xitao later took root in Yunnan for a long time, grew into a famous tropical botanist, and established the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Xishuangbanna in 1959. Yu Dejun, who worked in Beijing for many years with Hu Xianhua, became the ruler of the Beijing Botanical Garden in the future.
The three old tombs in the Lushan Botanical Garden are the burial places of the three founders Hu Xianhua (middle), Qin Renchang (right) and Chen Fenghuai (left), and the west side is adjacent to the tomb of Chen Yinke.
The trend of ambition is far-reaching
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Institute of Jingsheng Biological Survey merged with the Institute of Botany of the Beiping Research Institute to form the Institute of Plant Taxonomy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with Hu Xianhua as a researcher.
In January 1950, the Institute of Plant Taxonomy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences planned to establish a national herbarium and build a botanical garden in Beijing. In 1955, the "Beijing Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences" was officially established in Xiangshan, Beijing. On March 20, 1956, the 10th executive meeting of the Chinese Academy of Sciences agreed to cooperate with the Beijing Municipal People's Committee to build a botanical garden. In May of the same year, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Beijing Municipal People's Committee cooperated in submitting to the State Council to apply for the preparation of the Beijing Botanical Garden. In 1957, the Planning and Design Committee of Beijing Botanical Garden was established, with Yu Dejun as the first director. The design committee divided the botanical garden into two major districts, "South Plant" is mainly based on scientific research and professional visits, and "North Plant" is for the masses to visit and teaching practice. However, in 1960, the country's economy was in difficulty, the construction of special funds was frozen, and the construction of the park was stopped.
In 1962, Hu Xianhua was invited to attend the Third Session of the Third National Committee of the Chinese Political Consultative Conference. At the meeting, Hu Xianhua continued to promote the construction of the botanical garden system, "The botanical garden is an important scientific undertaking. There are several famous botanical gardens in the general large countries. The Chinese Academy of Sciences has successively taken over and created several new botanical gardens, which have made certain achievements in this regard. However, according to the national chess plan, several botanical gardens should be added according to the region, especially Sichuan. At present, yunnan has two botanical gardens, and an alpine botanical garden is also proposed, which is commendable. However, Sichuan, which is known as the 'country of heaven' and is extremely rich in plants, has not established a single botanical garden. The Biology Department of the Academy of Sciences should pay attention to this matter and draw up plans for the establishment of a botanical garden in Sichuan as soon as possible by the Southwest Branch or the local government, as well as in other provinces. (How to Give Full Play to the Role of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1962)
Hu Xianxiao died in 1968, failing to see the dream of a national botanical garden come true.
After the reform and opening up, the Chinese Botanical Garden ushered in a new vitality. In 1987, the Beijing Botanical Garden was officially opened to the public. The largest Metasequoia forest in the north stands over the cherry ditch in the garden. There is a Metasequoia pavilion in the ditch, and the rock wall on the side of the pavilion is engraved with Hu Xianhua's famous work "Metasequoia Song". "Langhan Baodi is coming out, and the East Wind is watching the west wind", which is the academic self-confidence of the older generation of Chinese botanists, and also shows the determination of the later generations of botanists to go forward and develop the cause of China's botanical gardens.
View of the garden gate of Beijing Botanical Garden. In 1955, the "Beijing Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences" was officially established in Xiangshan, Beijing, but for various reasons, the Beijing Botanical Garden was not officially opened to the public until 1987
In 1992, the United Nations Environment and Development Conference was convened, and China signed the Convention on Biological Diversity, committing itself to protecting endangered plants and animals and maximizing the protection of the earth's species diversity.
On December 26, 2003, Hou Renzhi, Chen Junyu, Wang Wencai and 11 other academicians of geography, garden planning and plant classification jointly wrote a letter to the central government, proposing to resume the construction of the National Botanical Garden. Wang Wencai was also a disciple of Hu Xianhua, and was recommended by Hu Xianhua to work at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his life was fruitful. Wang Wencai took over the baton in Hu Xianhua's hand and became one of the "dreamers" who promoted the establishment of the National Botanical Garden. The academicians wrote in the letter: "As the world's plant treasure house, China should establish a national botanical garden with international advanced level to comprehensively collect and display China's rich plant resources, protect biodiversity, and carry out popular science education to improve the quality of the people." ”
At the end of 2021, the State Council approved that the first national botanical garden with "Chinese characteristics, world-class and harmony of all things" will be built in Beijing, relying on the existing resources of the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Beijing Botanical Garden. This means that the national botanical garden system that condenses the scientific ideals and patriotic feelings of countless Chinese botanists is just around the corner, and the Voice of China will sing the forest of the world. At this time, it had been nearly a hundred years since Hu Xianhua had made a wish at Harvard University to establish China's own botanical garden in 1925, and 78 years had passed since Hu Xianhua formally submitted the "Case for the Establishment of the Institute of Economic Botany and the Central Botanical Garden" in 1944. After the unremitting efforts of several generations of Chinese botanists, the dream of a national botanical garden with "original mountains and rivers, extremely life-threatening plants and trees" will eventually come true.
Hu Xianhua's "Metasequoia Song" has the sentence "Langhan Baodi is coming out, and the East Wind is looking at the west wind", which pins on the efforts of Chinese botanists represented by Hu Xianhua, hoping that the Chinese botanical discipline can have the confidence and pride of "Dongfeng Looking at the West Wind"
(This article has received strong support from Xu Hao, Hu Xiaojiang, Ma Jinshuang, hereby thanks; the title of this article is from the National Botanical Garden)