In 1958, Chun and Kuang described Cathaya Chun & Kuang as a new genus of Pinaceae. They included one fossil species, C. loehri (Engelh. & Kink.) Chun & Kuang and two extant species, C. argyrophylla Chun & Kuang and C. nanchuanensis Chun & Kuang. Under Art. 40.1 of the Shenzhen Code, they did not validly publish Cathaya because they did not designate a type species for the generic name. Four years later (Chun and Kuang 1962), they again published on Cathaya (in Chinese) where they cited the 1958 publication and included one species C. argyrophylla (with C. nanchuanensis in synonymy) under Cathaya. According to Art. 40.3, they validated both the generic name Cathaya and C. argyrophylla in 1962. Further examination of the type collection and botanical history of the discovery of C. argyrophylla revealed that the type collection Guang-Fu-Lin-Qu Exped. 00198 consists of 11 duplicates in the <br> <br> South China Institute of Botany (IBSC)<br> <br> and 9 duplicates in other herbaria (GAC, IBK, PE, SZ) and that the intended type specimen (IBSC0000004) consists of two gatherings: the bark, reproductive shoot and seed cones collected in 1955, whereas pollen-bearing cones were collected in 1956. We thus lectotypify the name C. argyrophylla with the specimen Guang-Fu-Lin-Qu Exped. 00198 (IBSC0000004 excl. pollen-bearing cones).
