E. H.
in
by KRISTIN S. CLAUSEN and SHIU-YING Hu
Ernest Henry Wilson traveled in China on four separate trips between 1899 and 1911 to collect seeds, propagating material, and specimens of the rich temperate flora of Hupeh and Szechuan. His first two trips were made while he was in the employ of the English nursery firm of James Veitch and Sons. He then was sent on two collecting trips by the Arnold Arboretum.
The sources of information used to ascertain Wilson’s collecting localities are as follows: photographs taken during the two Arnold
Arboretum trips to China by Wilson, and his field notebooks, trip journals, and numerical lists of specimens and seeds. When Wilson traveled in China, he was working in virtually unmapped territory and had to rely on the rudimentary maps of missionaries and Western merchants. Because there was not yet a standard system for romanization of Chinese, it is likely that he had to create his own
_
Kristin Clausen has been working with Dr. Richard Howard this year as a research assistant in in botany for the Arnold Arboretum. She has a
B.S.
botany from the University of Wisconsin and plans to be a graduate student this fall in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Shiu-ying Hu, botanist, has worked for the Arnold Arboretum for 27 years,
She has worked as an associate specializing in the flora of China.
professor at West China Union University,
Chengtu, Szechuan (E. H. Wilson’s headquarters in China) and has traveled through most of the area shown on these maps.
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Map 1. China and neighboring countries. Provinces where Wilson collected plants are shaded. Note the western border of Szechuan during Wilson’s time
(broken line) and the course of the Yangtze River (dotted line). Boxed area tndicates area included in Map 2.
Map 2. The major rivers of Hupeh and Szechuan. Collecting localities in Yunnan from the first Wilson expedition to China for Veitch and Sons and two localities in Kiangst provmce at the eastern border of Hupeh. Boxed areas indicate Maps 3 and 5, and 4 and 6.

141 spellings in order to record the place names of hamlets and
too small to be on any map. This is in corroborated by inconsistencies
Wilson’s spellings throughout his notes, lists, and books from the
China trips.
During the early period of British and American involvement with
China, the Post Office system of transliteration was used in mapping.
In 1942 it began to be replaced by the Wade-Giles system. In order to prepare the maps for this paper, it was necessary to change Wilson’s spellings to those of the Wade-Giles system in order to tap into this geographic literature. More recently, the People’s
of
China has adopted the Pinyin system of transliteration. This system is now being used by The New York Times and The National Geographic Society.
We are using Wilson’s
on the maps because we feel that these will be the most helpful to researchers trying to identify localities for his specimens. In addition, we have prepared a list that gives the Wade-Giles and Pinyan equivalents for each of these ings. In order to ease the problem of using maps with different systems of transliteration, the latitude and longitude of each
are given.
In Wilson’s time, China was divided into three levels of administrative units: provinces, districts, and "hsien" (townships). Since then, there have been many changes, two of which have directly affected the mapping of Wilson’s localities: changes in names of major cities, and the extension of the western boundary of Szechuan.
An example of the first case is the major Tibetan border trading city of Tachien-lu, which Wilson used as a base on his collecting trips.
Today it is known as K’ang-ting. Such changes are indicated in our list by parentheses around the current name in the Wade-Giles and
Pinyin columns. In some cases where both names are still in current usage, both are retained. Szechuan’s western boundary during
Wilson’s trips is indicated by the line on Map 1. The territory to the west was called Eastern Tibet by Western explorers of the period and includes towns now well within the heart of Szechuan.
A hsien may refer to a township as well as to the township seat.
We have taken all Wilson hsien designations to refer to townships.
However, because of the small scale of our maps we have designated only the seat. A given "hsien" the vicinity
should be interpreted of’ the town of the same name on the maps.
as
"in
We have included those localities at the "hsien" level or above.
Many villages and hamlets that are listed as collecting localities are simply not to be found on maps of the scale accessible to most researchers. In the few cases where we have included these smaller localities, our source was the map at the end of Wilson’s book, China
Mother Gardens.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Laurie B. Feine and Dr. Bernice Schubert for their critical review of the manuscript.

Map 3. Arnold Arboretum expedition to China, 1906-1909: collecting localities in western Hupeh and eastern Szechuan.
Map 4. Arnold Arboretum expedition to China, 1906-1909: collecting localities in western Szechuan.

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Map 5. Arnold Arboretum expedition to China, 1910-1911: collecting localities in western Hupeh and eastern Szechuan.
Map 6. Arnold Arboretum expedition to China, 1910-1911: collecting localities in western Szechuan.

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