Biography

Chinese botanist and pteridologist who made significant collections of plants from Mongolia to Yunnan. Ren-Chang Ching was born in Wujin, Jiangsu, and studied botany and forestry at the University of Nanjing. After graduating in 1925 he taught at Southeastern University and from 1927 was Head of the Botany Section, Nanjing Museum. At this time he switched his focus from trees to pteridophytes, which would be his specialism thereafter. At this time, there were no experts on Chinese ferns in China and not a single fern specimen correctly identified in the small herbarium that had just been initiated in Beijing. Ching struck up correspondence with pteridologists in the West (H. Christ, C. Christensen, W.R. Maxon and E.B. Copeland), gathering in this way a basic library on Asiatic ferns to refer to. In addition he set about making extensive collections of ferns, especially from the provinces south of the Yangtze, but also knew he needed to see type specimens in western herbarium collections.

Versing himself in western languages so he could draw on the wealth of Chinese herbarium specimens held in American and European institutions, Ching toured Europe following the Fifth International Botanical Congress in 1930. He first went to Copenhagen, consulting the fern expert Carl Christensen, and after the congress worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for more than a year. He visited Copenhagen again in 1932 and then Vienna, Prague and other European herbaria before returning to China later that year, where he joined the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology, Beijing. Soon becoming a leading light in Chinese botany, in 1933 Ching was one of the founder members of the Chinese Botanical Society and soon afterwards founded the Lushan Arboretum and Botanical Garden in Jiangsi Province, which he directed.

When Japanese forces invaded China in 1937, Ching was forced to flee to Kunming in Yunnan Province. Here he resumed work at Yunnan University and helped to found the Lijiang Botanical Station, of which he was director until 1945. Ching remained in Yunnan until 1949, when he returned to Beijing as head of the Taxonomic Section in the Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica (as the Fan Institute was renamed). In this period his energies were focussed on education and forestry, but he maintained his interest in ferns for the rest of his days, publishing more than 140 papers and books on pteridology. In 1986 plans were made for an international symposium on pteridophyte taxonomy to be held in Beijing in 1988, to celebrate the 90th birthday of Ching. He did not live to attend the meeting, but passed away in Beijing in July 1986. Among his significant works were Icones Filicum Sinicarum (1930-1958, with H.H. Hu) and the series "Studies of Chinese Ferns" (mostly in the Bulletin of the Fan Memorial Institute of Biology, 1930-1949). He was also the principal author of the fern treatments in Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae.

Sources:
R.C. Ching and Z.H. Wang, 1982, "A Brief Report on the Progress of Pteridological Research in China", American Fern Journal, 72(1): 1-2
K.S. Shing (ed. A.C. Jermy and A.M. Paul), 1988, "Ching Ren Chang 1898-1986: A Bibliography", Taxon, 37(2): 409-416.