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Why is the yew called "plant gold"?

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The yew is a species left over after the Quaternary glaciation, known as a "living fossil" of the plant kingdom, and is a rare and endangered plant in the world. China has listed it as a first-class protected plant. When the yew fruit ripens, red berries cover the branches, gorgeous and varied; it gets its name because it closely resembles the "love bean" of the south. It is not only an important timber tree species and ornamental tree species, but also a precious medicinal plant. In 1989, the United States was the first to detect paclitaxel from substances contained in the yew. Experiments proved that paclitaxel has a unique anti-tumor mechanism and a significant tumor-inhibiting effect, and it is considered the most

The yew is a species left over after the Quaternary glaciation, known as a "living fossil" of the plant kingdom, and is a rare and endangered plant in the world. China has listed it as a first-class protected plant. When the yew fruit ripens, red berries cover the branches, gorgeous and varied; it gets its name because it closely resembles the "love bean" of the south. It is not only an important timber tree species and ornamental tree species, but also a precious medicinal plant. In 1989, the United States was the first to detect paclitaxel from substances contained in the yew. Experiments proved that paclitaxel has a unique anti-tumor mechanism and a significant tumor-inhibiting effect, and it is considered the anti-cancer drug with the greatest development prospects today. With the continuous deepening of clinical medical research, multiple medicinal values of paclitaxel have also been discovered.

The yew is an evergreen large tree of the genus Taxus in the family Taxaceae. There are 11 species in the world, and 5 in China, namely the Japanese yew (Taxus cuspidata), the Chinese yew (Taxus chinensis), the southern Chinese yew (Taxus wallichiana var. mairei), the Yunnan yew (Taxus yunnanensis), and the Tibetan yew (Taxus wallichiana). Because the yew's distribution range is relatively narrow, and due to illegal logging by people, it is now near the brink of endangerment. At present, there are only 10 million wild yew trees in the world. An American expert studying paclitaxel said that even if all the existing yews in the world were cut down, the extracted paclitaxel could only save the lives of 125,000 cancer patients. Therefore, in order to protect the limited natural resources of yews, all countries have banned all logging. At present, the international market price of paclitaxel with 98% purity is 400,000 to 600,000 US dollars per kilogram, and the selling price of paclitaxel with 70% purity in China is 1.6 to 1.8 million yuan/kg, which is even more expensive than gold.

Due to the continuous increase in market demand for paclitaxel and the continuously rising development of paclitaxel projects, China's wild yew resources have suffered devastating damage. With the continuous strengthening of global protection measures for wild yew resources and China's severe crackdown on illegal logging of yews, it is no longer possible to use wild resources to produce paclitaxel, and resources have become a bottleneck restricting the development of paclitaxel production and processing enterprises. In order to catch up with the world trend of yew research and development, many scientific research institutions and factories in China have successively carried out artificial cultivation experiments of yews and clinical trial research on paclitaxel, and have made breakthrough progress. At present, in Fujian, Hunan, Sichuan, Yunnan, Heilongjiang and other places in China, there are already relatively large-scale bases for artificial cultivation of yews, with about 5 million planted trees and an annual production of about 200 kg of paclitaxel with 70% content. It is expected that in the next three years, China's artificially planted yew area will reach 20,000 mu, and the number planted will be more than 20 million trees.

There is a natural distribution of yews in southeastern Hunan Province, mostly the southern Chinese yew, but after the catastrophe of recent years, the resources are nearly exhausted. In order to save and develop this rare and endangered tree species, scientific and technical personnel of the Forestry Research Institute of Xinning County in the province began in 1990 to study the biological characteristics and silvicultural techniques of the yew, and achieved relatively good results. The scientific and technical personnel used the method of outdoor moist sand variable-temperature storage of seeds to break the seed dormancy period, and used understory seedling cultivation and moss protection of seedlings to cultivate yews, which attracted the attention of relevant experts at home and abroad.

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