The Hkakaborazi National Park of Nagmon Township of PutaO is located in PutaO Valley, the northernmost part of Myanmar and a major place for botany and bio species. Exploring the effectiveness of medicinal botanical plant, which still has not achieved scientific name, grow in Alphine forest can uncover the rich in botanical resources of Myanmar’s icy region.
The Hkakaborazi National Park is 942,080 acres wide and the local residents search the medicinal orchid specie called Langba in Rawang and Tibet language and Pechi in Chinese language, which grows in Alphine forest, on the hills to sell at K1.2 million per viss to the merchants. The merchants resell the product to the neighbouring countries for years. Therefore, the local botanists are worried that the unnamed medicinal botanical plant species would disappear from the country.
The Hkakaborazi National Park is making efforts to conduct research on unidentified ice mountain plant in orchid species and rare species and the park is now being preserved by 12 staff members. Moreover, the natural environment of the park is conserved by deploying the local educated persons. Such doings will support the biological and botanical development and biodiversity growth in conducting researches for the interests of country.
“There are over 200 orchid species at Hkakaborazi National Park and the country is proud for being a country that boasts of icy mountain in ASEAN and it should be conserved for ASEAN. The medicinal specie that they sell cannot be found its scientific name and on Google. So, if we make research, it will bring benefits to the country. Although it is used in preparation of cosmetics, it is also useful for pharmaceutical industries and other sectors. The purchasers (foreign countries) offer high prices as they might produce the species in their regions. The main point is that we should conserve this new specie of our country and conduct researches continuously. Our possessions shall not be lost. Although it is one of the orchid species, it does not have its name. I am sure it is a previous botanical plant. Therefore, we should conserve it in time,” said botanist U L Zeng Wah of Kachin State.
The Langba botanical plant grows on hilly region lasting for one year and it produces onion-shaped bulb between September and November, and the people sell these products. The Hkakaborazi National Park possesses 220 orchid species in addition to rare wild animals but it loses rare red panda, orchid, medicinal plants and yams every year. The people dig out the marketable Shipadee rhizome between March and May and the Langba yams in winter between September and November. In order to prevent the disappearance of Myanmar’s medicinal species, the continuous research on Langba plant, a medicinal plant species that has not yet been scientifically named, will reveal the botanical richness of the Hkakaborazi National Park to the world.
Translated.
