On July 7, a representative of the Kon Chu Rang Nature Reserve Management Board (Gia Lai province) said that the unit had just discovered and recorded a new mountain and soil kim giao tree population with 4 large individuals.
This tree complex is located in Kon Chu Rang Nature Reserve, belonging to the core area of Kon Ha Nung Plateau Biosphere Reserve.
According to the conservation area's survey team, the trees have an average diameter of about 1.7m and a height of over 50m. The branches are wide, the trunks are so large that several people cannot embrace them. The trees grow and exist for decades in tropical rainforests and have not been affected by humans.
Mr. Nguyen Hong Quan, Acting Director of Kon Chu Rang Nature Reserve, said that this is the first time recording in the Central Highlands area that there is a mountain-to-land kim giao species with such a large number of mother trees.
The unit predicts that there may still be many larger mother trees in the forest area of Kon Chu Rang Nature Reserve.
Meanwhile, the Vietnam Red Book ranks this species as about to be extinct, so the discovery and effective conservation of the gene source of the mountain-to-land kim giao species is an urgent task for researchers," Mr. Quan said.
Previously, it was thought that using kim giao wood to make chopsticks could detect toxins mixed in food.
According to the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, some units are researching the chemical composition of the soil mountain kim giao species, promising to find new active substances with high biological activity to treat some incurable diseases, especially cancer. Therefore, there needs to be an early conservation strategy for this plant species at both individual and population levels.
