Over the course of her career she produced over 160 academic treatises, collected over 30,000 specimens, and published the 800-page encyclopedia Food Plants of China.

[1][5] On 22 May 2012, Hu died at the age of 102 from kidney failure caused by pneumonia at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin, Hong Kong.

[2][5] John Williams attributes his piece Tree Song for Violin and Orchestra in a large part to Hu.

[3] He described the following experience in his note for the premiere in 2000:During our stroll we casually paused in front of a large tree that I hadn't looked at closely enough to recognize immediately.

I was thunderstruck by this coincidence, and when I told her of “my” metasequoia in the Public Garden she informed me that the younger tree I loved so much was also one of her children.