This Washington Post article makes fascinating Sunday reading.  The subject, Dan Hinkley, a plant explorer has devoted his life to historically tracking the 19th and 20th century discoverers of plants in the Asia surrounds.  “The ice age glaciers that erased much of the flora of Europe and North America were blocked by the Himalayas and other mountain ranges. The result? ‘The number of plant species within the boundaries of China is 10 times the plant species we have in North America,’ says Dan Hinkley, whose five-acre garden overlooking Puget Sound in Washington state has, it is fair to say, its share of these treasures.”  Read on.. Washington Post, 7/23/09, “A Plant Explorer Brings Asian Varieties to the West” by Adrian Higgins

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072002713.html