A new plant species has recently been discovered in the Ru Linh pristine forest in Quang Tri Province, north-central Vietnam and named after a man who has spent over 40 years voluntarily protecting the forest.

A group of Vietnamese botanists, along with officials from the Cam Lo – Dong Ha forest protection unit and Kagoshima University Museum in Japan, discovered and described a new species in the Lasianthus genus, which was collected from Quang Tri and neighboring Quang Binh Province.

The new species was published in the Phytotaxa journal on Tuesday.

Lasianthus is a large genus in the Rubiaceae family with 292 species worldwide. In Vietnam, 74 species of this genus have been recorded.

The new species was named Lasianthus trongii, after Nguyen Dinh Trong, who has protected the Ru Linh Forest for more than 40 years.

Ru Linh Forest, nearly 100 hectares in size, is the only pristine forest in the Quang Tri lowland area, where the new species was discovered and first collected. 

In 1977, Trong and several local people began protecting the forest. Thanks to their efforts, the forest has remained intact until now.

Lasianthus trongii is a shrub, one to three meters in height, with a hairless stem. The leaves are opposite, elliptical or lance-shaped, hairless on both sides, with a pointed leaf tip, nearly round base, six to eight pairs of secondary veins, two-to-three-millimeter long hairless petioles, and small triangular stipules.

The inflorescence is a corymb with seven flowers, nearly sessile, white in color, with a bell-shaped to truncated-conical calyx, hairless, divided into four triangular lobes.

Its fruits are smooth, orange-red when ripe, making them easily distinguishable in the wild.

Lasianthus trongii closely resembles L. tamdaoensis and L. kailarsenii but differs in its leaves, flowers, and notably its orange-red fruits, unlike the blue fruits of the other two species.

Though found in Quang Tri and Quang Binh Provinces, its small population qualifies it for an endangered status under the International Union for Conservation of Nature's 2024 Red List of Threatened Species.

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