Collections‐based systematics in the new age of discovery: Celebrating the legacy and life of Professor Wen‐Tsai Wang

Professor Wen‐Tsai Wang (王文采, June 5, 1926–November 16, 2022) was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and a legendary plant taxonomist at the Institute of Botany of CAS (Fig. 1). Herein, we organize a virtual special issue in Journal of Systematics and Evolution (JSE) to celebrate the legacy and life of Professor Wang, who was a leading plant taxonomist in China and made important contributions toward advancing the understanding of the flora of China, the biogeography of eastern Asia, and biodiversity research in the vast Hengduan Mountains. He served as the Editor‐in‐Chief of Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica (now JSE) for 6 years from 1982 to 1988, and trained several generations of plant taxonomists in China (Li, 2001). Professor Wang graduated from Beijing Normal University in 1949 and joined the Institute of Plant Taxonomy (now Institute of Botany), CAS, as a research assistant in 1950. He was promoted to the professor rank in 1982, and was elected as an academician of CAS in 1993. Professor Wang had a long, productive career at the Herbarium of the Institute of Botany, CAS (Fig. 2), and published more than 250 taxonomic and floristic papers and several monographs (Fig. 3). He described 28 new genera, 303 new taxa at the tribal, sectional, and series ranks, ca. 1370 new species, and 242 new combinations. Professor Wang was one of the most important participants in the compilation of the enormous 8‐volume series Iconographia Cormophytorum Sinicorum (Institute of Botany, CAS, 1972–1983) (Fig. 4). He was first assigned to be in charge of the preparation of the book series Iconographia Cormophytorum Sinicorum in 1965 to set the foundation for preparing Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae (FRPS) and help with plant identifications in China. The book series included 11 000 higher plant species of China with brief descriptions on morphology, ecology, distribution, and uses, 9082 of which had line drawings. He contributed the treatments of several families in this book series, including Boraginaceae, Geraniaceae, Gesneriaceae, Papaveraceae, Proteaceae, Ranunculaceae, Urticaceae, and Vitaceae. This book series has been widely used by scientific institutions, colleges, and universities to train botanists and young students in biology throughout China and became the most important botanical classics from China. Professor Wang was a taxonomic authority on several difficult plant families in China, including Boraginaceae, Rubiaceae, Ranunculaceae, Gesneriaceae, Urticaceae, and Vitaceae, through his extensive herbarium and field research (Fig. 5). He contributed several treatments to Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae, treating part of the Ranunculaceae (Aconitum, Delphinium, Anemone, and several small genera) (Wang, 1979, 1980), Gesneriaceae (Wang, 1990), Boraginaceae (Kung & Wang, 1989; Wang, 1993), and Urticaceae (Wang & Chen, 1995; Wang, 2014, 2016). Professor Wang retired in 1986, but he continued his research on Ranunculaceae, Boraginaceae, Urticaceae, and Gesneriaceae. From the early 1990s to the early 2000s, he visited several major herbaria abroad in Europe and United States, including BM, E, G, GH, K, LE, MHA, MO, NY, P, S, UPS, and US. He published 77 papers after he turned 85 years old, and only stopped his research quite recently in the spring of 2021 (e.g., Wang, 1993, 1994, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). Professor Wang also contributed to the collaborative Flora of China project and treated Ranunculaceae (in collaboration with De‐Zhi Fu and Liang‐Qian Li) and Gesneriaceae (in collaboration with Kai‐Yu Pan and Zhen‐Yu Li). In 1996, he visited the United States National Herbarium (US) at the Smithsonian Institution, the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University (GH), the New York Botanical Garden (NY), and the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium (MO). During this trip, he completed the revision of Gesneriaceae for Flora of China with Dr. Laurence E. Skog (Smithsonian Institution) (Wang et al., 1998). Beyond his taxonomic and floristic studies, Professor Wang published several important papers on distribution patterns and migration routes in the Eastern Asiatic Region (Wang, 1989, 1992). These papers have inspired many studies on eastern Asian biogeography (Wen et al., 2014; Nie et al., 2016; Liu et al., 2021; Mao et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2022). The two volumes on vascular plants of the Hengduan Mountains that he edited (Wang et al., 1993, 1994) documented all the plants collected in this vast region based on specimens created by Chinese and western collectors. This was a major achievement at the time when herbarium collections were not easily available online or digitized. The completion of the two volumes set the foundation for systematic, biogeographic, and conservation work in this vast evolutionary hotspot in Asia. Professor Wang trained numerous students and workers in plant taxonomy through his courses at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and many colleges, universities, and research institutes (Fig. 6). He was always humble, modest, and approachable, and taught many younger colleagues on plant taxonomy informally at the PE Herbarium (Fig. 7). He was well known for training the taxonomists in PE such as Professor De‐Zhi Fu, Professor Liang‐Qian Li, Professor Zhen‐ Yu Li, and numerous other students (Fig. 8). Professor Wang joined the editorial board of Acta Phytotaxonomica Sinica (now JSE) in 1973. In May 1981,