He was the founder of plant taxonomy in China and a pioneer of modern botany and paleobotany research in the country.

[2] One of his most notable achievements as a botanist was the identification of the living fossil Metasequoia glyptostroboides (dawn redwood) in the 1940s, which was previously thought to have been extinct for over 150 million years.

Targeted as an intellectual during the Cultural Revolution, Hu Xiansu endured repeated struggle sessions, the stress of which likely contributed to his fatal heart attack in Beijing on 16 July 1968.

Hu Xiansu was given the courtesy name of Buzeng (Chinese: 步曾; pinyin: bù zēng; lit.

[8][9] The imperial examinations were abolished in 1905, and in 1906 Hu went to the Hongdu Middle School in Nanchang and started modern education.

In October 1911 the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty, discontinuing the operations of the university and ending Hu's studies there.

[8] Hu went to the United States again in 1923 and studied in Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, receiving his doctorate in 1925.

His doctoral dissertation,[c] under the supervision of dendrologist John George Jack, was the first comprehensive survey of plants in the whole of China.

In 1933, Hu played a leading role in the founding of the Botanical Society of China, serving as its second president.

Despite this environment, Hu was openly critical of Lysenkoism, being the first major academic in China to publicly denounce it as pseudoscience.

His home was repeatedly ransacked; the books, calligraphy, and paintings he had collected throughout his lifetime were confiscated by the workplace.

[20][7] As an intellectual, one of the groups targeted during the Cultural Revolution, Hu endured repeated struggle sessions, in which he was ordered to wear a Kuomintang flag to signify his past relation.

[7] He was buried at the Metasequoia forest in the Pine and Cypress district of the Lushan Botanical Garden at Mount Lu on 15 May 1984.