Vice Minister ZHAO Shucong of the State Forestry Administration paid a visit to Wood Collection in the Research Institute of Wood Industry of Chinese Academy of Forestry (CAF) on January 5th 2012 and was accompanied by CAF’s president ZHANG Shougong and other entrants.

The Wood Collection has accumulated and stored nearly 23,000 itemized wood specimens which consist of about 5,000 species of 1,100 genera from over 180 families. All the specimens are arranged in 4 rooms, namely, the Wood Holotype Room which entreasures the holotype wood herbarium; The Wood Exhibition Room where the specimens have been categorized in cabinets by the wood uses, such as the cabinet of Hongmu, as well as wood microscope pictures and the isotype wood specimens; The Wood Exsiccata Specimens Room stores the intact exsiccata specimens. The Wood Section Room entreasures as many as 30,000 numbered permanent wood slices.

The Wood Collection in CAF ranks on top of its kind in China who entreasures complete ranges of wood specimens that cover the great number of regions and varieties with easy access of retrieval.

In 1932, the Collection was established in a institute which was then called Beiping Institute of Biology. It moved to Leshan City in Sichuan Province during the Period of Resistance against Japanese War and renamed as the Southwest Wood Research Laboratory and it was relocated back to Beijing in 1952. The Chinese Government has pumped to the Collection large amount of funding since 1949.  Great numbers of wood specimens have been collected throughout the country and be swopped worldwide with over 70 countries. In particular in the recent decade, researchers collected or purchased many wood herbariums from other countries and regions. The Collection has become a full-fledged wood specimen storehouse through generations’ efforts in the past 80 years.