Recording fungal diversity in Republican China: Deng Shuqun’s research in the 1930s

Local efforts to record fungal species in China were first motivated by the search for agricultural plant pathogens in the 1910s. Regional surveys of fungal diversity emerged in the early 1920s and led to the development of taxonomic mycology in the 1930s. Deng Shuqun (Teng Shu-ch’ün) (1902–1970), who studied at Cornell University from 1923 into 1928, contributed significantly. His papers published in the 1930s reported on more than 2,500 Chinese fungal species and varieties, while a mycological monograph published in 1939 portrayed more than 1,400 taxa. These publications, all written in English, helped to make China’s fungal diversity known to the global scientific community. The circulation and distribution of Deng’s publications and collections of fungi reflected the inter-war international network within which scientific specimens and information were being shared.