Ernest 'Chinese' Wilson was born in 1876 in Chipping Camden, Gloucestershire, where there is now a Wilson Memorial Garden (opened in 1984) containing some of the plants he introduced. The garden, open every day free of charge, is planted exclusively with Wilson introductions. These include the paper bark maple Acer griseum AGM, and the plant for which he wished to be remembered—the very beautiful Lilium regale AGM.

His first voyage to China in 1899 was to collect Davidia involucrata for Veitch's nursery. The following is a listing of the woody plants he collected for the Arnold Arboretum either as live specimens or as herbarium specimens, They are from western China during the years 1907, 1908 and 1910 and it does not contain the plants he collected in Japan. The listing is taken from Plantae wilsonianae by Charles Sprague Sargent in 1916-1917 which does contain some plants not collected, because Wilson, Rehder and Sargent used the publication of the book to revise certain genera.