Plant specialist's passion still flowers

Beijing honors botanist for outstanding work in often-dangerous circumstances, Yang Feiyue reports.

Wang Qiang's dark skin and weather-beaten face quickly conveys his sometimes-extreme experiences, on the road and out of doors.

Right after taking a short break for the New Year's holiday in early January, Wang has already taken trips to the United Kingdom and Kenya, each for about half a month, to study plant specimens.

"Those countries preserve records of plants that existed more than a century ago, which are crucial for botanical studies," says Wang, a professor at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.