Issue Information

A group of tourists cross Supreme Harmony Square in the Forbidden City, Beijing, China. In the Forbidden City, Nanmu timber — known as “imperial wood” — was used to build palaces. However, the species of tree originally used for Nanmu timber has been subject of a long‐standing debate. Jiao et al ’s article ‘Ancient plastid genomes solve the tree species mystery of the imperial wood “Nanmu” in the Forbidden City, the largest existing wooden palace complex in the world’ revisits this unresolved debate by combining morphological traits with ancient DNA analyses. The study provides a new solution for identifying the species of timber used for the construction of ancient architecture, and increases understanding of the way in which forest resources were utilized by our ancestors, despite the lack of a plant taxonomic framework in ancient times. Image courtesy of Fudong Li and Yafang Yin.