Study on the Botanical Expedition of Qin Renchang in Gansu and Inner Mongolia,China
In March 1923,Qin Renchang(秦仁昌)participated in a scientific expedition sponsored by the American National Geographic Society,collecting a total of 1,158 specimens botan-ical specimens in Inner Mongolia(内蒙古),Ningxia(宁夏),Gansu(甘肃),and Qinghai(青海).Over 40 botanists from different countries were involved in the identification of these collections,and a systematic enumerated complete list was published in 1941 by Egbert H.Walker.Qin also provid-ed accounts of the cultural landscapes and plants along the route and conducted a preliminary investi-gation into the vegetation of Gansu.He was the first Chinese individual to have conducted botanical expeditions in these regions.His work indicates that locally trained botanists had begun to play an important role in incorporating Chinese plants into the modern botanical system.