 |
Calophyllum teysamanni tree, Sarawak Malaysia.
© D.D. Soejarto |
 |
 |
Calophyllum sample from the Harvard University Herbaria collection.
© Arnold Arboretum |
|
|
The Really Bad News
An expedition was immediately dispatched back to Borneo. But on their return, scientists were alarmed to discover that the original tree had vanished, cut down along with the rain forest that had surrounded it. Other Calophyllum trees still stood, but they turned out to be a different species with no anti-HIV properties. Had a cure for AIDS been destroyed along with this portion of the Lundu forest?
A Botanic Garden to the Rescue
The story owes its happy ending to earlier bio-prospectors: the British colonists who had collected plants from Borneo for the Singapore Botanic Garden a hundred years earlier. After a lot of taxonomic study, the species of Calophyllum originally misidentified, was finally determined to be Calophyllum calanolides. Trees of the same rare species as the original branch sample were found growing in the Botanic Garden. In 1993, the Sarawak government made it illegal to cut down or export this species of Calophyllum without authorization.
|
 |
|
3 of 5 |
|
 |
|
|
|