From Horticulture Week
Forest Research scientist Matt Parratt is working on a project to help conserve 5 threatened conifer species.
Matt Parratt, a seed specialist with the Forest Research’s Centre for Forest Resources and Management, travelled to Vietnam as part of an international tree conservation programme.
The global conservation project aims to help conserve five globally threatened conifer species, including Vietnam’s Xanthocyparis vietnamensis and Cupressus tonkinensis, both of which were only recently identified.
Parratt has brought seeds of the X. vietnamensis tree to the UK.
The tree is struggling to replace itself in the wild through natural regeneration because it produces very few fertile seeds. He and his colleagues at Forest Research’s Alice Holt Lodge research station in Surrey will study them and try to germinate them.
During Parratt’s visit to Vietnam, he gave a presentation to his about the propagation of rare and endangered conifers at the Commission’s National Pinetum at Bedgebury in Kent.
He visited nurseries and local communities involved in the project, advised on propagation problems and techniques, and visited conservation sites where X. vietnamensis had been re-introduced to the wild and other sites where C. tonkinensis is being cultivated as ornamental specimens.
Through his work, as well as with the expert guidance he provided during the trip, it is hoped there will be more successful propagation and re-introduction of the endangered species to the wild.
Parratt’s visit was funded by the Friends of the Bedgebury National Pinetum, and was part of a project to conserve threatened conifer species in Vietnam run by The Global Trees Campaign under the charity Fauna & Flora International and the Centre for Plant Conservation in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The Forestry Commission is also a founding member of the Global Partnership for Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), which is working to share experience, resources and expertise to reverse damaging deforestation and restore the world’s lost forests.
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