By A B (Tony) Cunningham

Paris in the Spring, mm---mm---
Love is in the air, mm---mm---
Life's a love affair
And ev'ry pair of arms a rendesvous for two.

(Roy Noble, 1935)

Many people know Paris, the capital of France, as the world’s most romantic city, but few realize there are two kinds of Paris. One is a city, the other a very special group of plants. The second Paris, the plant known as chong lou, is famous in China, not for romance, but for saving lives. Chong lou does this by stopping bleeding, due to anti-coagulant properties in the rhizome, which also has analgesic (pain-killing) properties. The problem is that in order to save people’s lives, Paris plants die when their rhizomes are dug up. Large-scale commercial trade in chong lou raises three important questions that link conservation, business and people’s health together. Firstly, can wild stocks of this famous TCM sustain commercial demand and if not, what does this mean for local livelihoods or for biodiversity conservation? Secondly, if wild stocks of Paris are declining, can this influence product quality? Thirdly, what can be done to reverse the decline in wild stocks?

In 1935, when Roy Noble wrote his hit song “Paris in the Spring”, the montane forests of Yunnan and Sichuan would have been filled with Paris plants flowering in the spring. This was before commercial exploitation of Paris rhizomes started, when Paris polyphylla (Melianthiaceae) was only used on a local scale. Since 1940, however, chong lou has been the “secret” ingredient in a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) produced by the company Yunnan Baiyao and used in army first aid kits in both China and Vietnam. Founded by Qu Huanzhang (1880-1938), Yunnan Baiyao has grown from small beginnings to a global brand name, now exported all over the world. What quantities of the hard brown rhizomes are used each year would be guesswork, but undoubtedly amounts to hundreds of tons per year.

By 1980, commercial demand had spread from Yunnan to remote villages in Sichuan. As Mr Yu Zerun, the head of a village explains:

I was the first in this village to start collecting chong lou in 1980, selling the dried rhizomes for RMB5 per jin [about US$1.50 per kg]. RMB5 was worth a lot then. During the collection season, in one day, I could collect more that 30 jin [15 kg] of fresh rhizomes, which is equal to 10 jin of dry rhizomes. Today, there are so many people collecting chong lou in the forest, including women and children, because the price is high (60 RMB per jin for dry rhizomes). Because of this, chong lou is difficult to find and I can only get 5 jin of rhizomes per day, six times less than I was collecting in the 1980’s.

Four recent baseline surveys of medicinal plant populations and their importance to local livelihoods supported by a jointly funded project between EU-China Biodiversity Programme (ECBP) and WWF in landscapes of the Upper Yangtze eco-region support local people’s observations. In Erma village, Meigu, 58% of the 90 households were involved in medicinal plant collection, with 36% of households collecting chong lou. Average household income from chong lou collection in the 2008 season was 2,921 RMB, with one household earning 9,000 RMB – a major subsidy from nature. In villages surveyed in both Pingwu county and in Wenxian, medicinal plant collecting was also important, providing 30% of cash income to households. The remainder of cash income comes mainly from livestock sales, to a lesser extent, crop sales and in Pingwu county, from mining. In each case, declines in chong lou numbers were recognized by local people. In the baseline ecological survey in Meigu, only three Paris polyphylla plants were found in 135 botanical survey plots. Across the total landscape, there are still many thousands of Paris polyphylla plants, so this species is certainly not near extinction, but continued decline is worrying long-term trend.

Declining chong lou populations is not just a problem for local livelihoods. It is a global conservation issue. China has 22 of the world’s 24 Paris species, and 19 Paris species, 80% are only found in China. The centre of diversity for the genus Paris is the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. Several species also occur in forests in the Upper Yangtze eco-region, such as the Hengduan mountains, Qinling and Minshan. Local people in these areas recognize several different varieties of chong lou, some that may be new to science or may have new chemical properties. These landscapes are also a globally important centre of diversity for several other medicinal plant genera as well, but are best known as prime Giant Panda habitat. Declining Paris polyphylla populations in forests accessible from villages means that more and more people now enter nature reserves to illegally exploit high value medicinal species like beimu (Fritillaria), chong lou (Paris polyphylla), qianghuo (Notopterygium) and the caterpillar fungus, dôngchóng xiàcão (Cordyceps sinensis). This results is conflicts with conservation in protected areas and nature reserves.

Conservation concerns about the future of declining Paris populations is supported from other studies. In a search for Paris species in the most detailed phylogenetic study of Paris DNA carried out to date , Dr Li Yunheng (Kunming Institute of Botany) and his colleagues managed to find 21 of the 24 Paris species for analysis. Two species eluded them, despite searches in the areas where they were known to occur and had been collected before, leading these scientists to suggest that Paris undulata (endemic to China) and Paris birmanica (endemic to Burma) may now be extinct, with no known populations maintained in botanical gardens. The problem doesn’t end there. As scarcity of the focal species, Paris polyphylla has increased, it is likely that other Paris species are being exploited. This may include Paris daliensis, Paris delavayi, Paris mairei and Paris thibetica. The consequences switching species in TCM originally based on Paris polyphylla are unknown, but may have implications for people’s health. The health of the Upper Yangtze ecoregion also needs to be taken into account. In the last verse of “Paris in the Spring”, Roy Noble wrote:

You're to blame if you're alone mmm---
It's grand, it's new, mmm---
It's me, it's you
Ev'ry beating heart becomes a part of Paris In The Spring.

Will the 21st century be the final verse for Paris polyphylla and possibly several other species? Will we be left with one lonely Paris, surrounding by holes in the forest, where the others have been dug up? If so, then we’re all to blame. But it is not too late. In Pingwu county, Mr Yu Zerun, who pioneered the commercial harvest of wild chong lou, is now doing pioneering work of another type, successfully cultivating chong lou from seed. Large companies like Yunnan Baiyao are also promoting chong lou cultivation. It is through partnerships that we can make a difference to people, plants and pandas in the Upper Yangtze ecoregion: a combination of managed wild harvest, cultivation and certification of sustainable sourced or organic medicinal species linked to alternative livelihoods and a socially responsible market.


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