A fluorescent ligand, 1-(2-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde)-4-aminosalicylhydrazone (HMB-ASH), was newly designed and synthesized, and its fluorescence characteristics for metal ions were investigated in the pH range 3.0–10.5 (at a difference of 0.5 for each metal). After testing 31 different metal ions, it was found that HMB-ASH was able to emit fluorescence intensely at 512nm with an excitation wavelength of 353nm in the presence ...