In Dinh Lap commune, Lang Son province, northern Vietnam, a Tay-ethnic technician born in 1993 pushed a tree species with a natural germination rate of 5% up to annual shipments of 30,000 seedlings. The effort of Hoang Ngoc Vu, reported by Dan Viet on 27 July, misses the point if read as a heartwarming tale of returning home to start a business. This tree is an endangered conifer with only 27 wild individuals confirmed in the province, and in Vietnam it falls into a protection class where commercial-purpose harvesting and use are prohibited. Moving to the side of increasing a resource that cannot be taken from the wild, and obtaining from the authorities a commercial-purpose growing-area code - that is the point to read for Japanese procurement staff.<\/p>\n
Mr. Vu is a technician who graduated from the Vietnam National University of Agriculture (Hoc vien Nong nghiep Viet Nam) in 2018; he returned to his hometown and, while working as a civil servant, began raising seedlings of Lang Son snow hoang dan (hoang dan tuyet Lang Son), then quit his government post in 2025 to do it full-time. What became the wall was propagation. According to Dan Viet, this tree's seeds have a natural germination rate of about 5%<\/strong> and no higher. Moreover, the fruit does not reach a maturity at which seed can be collected unless left on the tree for two years after setting. If it fails, the structure is such that you wait another two years.<\/p>\n At the end of 2022, Mr. Vu took seed samples to his alma mater, the Vietnam National University of Agriculture, and entered into research on treatment methods that promote germination. He shifted his trial-and-error onto laboratory procedure and brought it down to a reproducible process. The current field is 0.9 hectares in total area<\/strong>, broken down into a 0.4-hectare intensive-nursery zone and a 0.5-hectare display-and-introduction zone. In the single year 2025 he shipped 30,000 seedlings of various kinds and permanently employs three local people.<\/p>\n The selling price moves with tree height and age. In a range from 60,000-70,000 VND for a small seedling to 200,000-300,000 VND for a grown plant, converted at 1 yen = about 162 VND (as of July 2026) this comes to about 370-432 yen and about 1,235-1,852 yen<\/strong>. The outlet is two-tiered. Young to medium trees go to the markets for ornamentals, bonsai and feng-shui trees, and once they enter the mature-tree stage of 7-8 years or more from planting, the branches, fruit and leaves can be taken to extract hoang dan essential oil. A design that lets you take aromatic raw material without felling the trunk pays off in its fit with the legal regulations discussed below.<\/p>\n This tree species' rarity is most plainly shown by the local administration's figures. In materials issued by Lang Son province's agriculture-and-environment department in March 2024, the individuals remaining in the wild are 27 individuals<\/strong>, and the distribution is limited to Phu Lien commune, Phu Lung district. All 27 trees have their locations registered and are kept under management, and about 700 seedlings obtained from sowing have been planted on the grounds of the forest-protection-area management board, at schools and in farmers' gardens, it says. At the national level, hoang dan is listed in Vietnam's Red Book. Opening the endangered-and-rare flora-and-fauna list that Decree 84\/2021\/ND-CP replaced, \"Hoang dan huu lien (Cupressus tonkinensis)\" appears under the cypress family as Group IA. Group I is the top class, where commercial-purpose harvesting and use are prohibited. Put the other way, there remains room to put on the commercial market those artificially propagated at a facility registered with the authorities.<\/p>\n International assessment is severe too. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh's Threatened Conifers of the World records Cupressus tonkinensis as qualifying for Critically Endangered. The basis is the figures that individuals confirmed in surveys in 2004, 2008 and 2009 came to 25 in total, that the range is the Cai Kinh limestone massif in Phu Lung district, Lang Son province, spanning less than 5 square kilometers, and that only 6 trees have a record of bearing cones. Up to the 1990s there were records in surrounding districts and neighboring provinces too, and the range at that time was estimated at 204 square kilometers. On the other hand, it also clearly states that the IUCN Red List itself does not list this scientific name because it treats it as a synonym of Cupressus torulosa. Since the treatment of the classification is divided, confirming the tree-species name on paper cannot be done loosely.<\/p>\n The reason for the decline is on the same page too. Its rot-resistant, fragrant timber was targeted, and in addition essential oil taken from the roots, bark and leaves<\/strong> it was felled for. A harvesting restriction came in 1958 but had little effect, and since 1997 commercial quantities have disappeared from the market. Mr. Vu's attempt to take essential oil from branches, fruit and leaves without felling the trunk is the flip side of this history.<\/p>\n Since wild trees cannot be felled for commercial purposes, only artificially propagated ones go on the commercial market. Placed alongside the case of switching a medicinal root whose wild harvesting had hit its limit over to a cultivated origin (From forest to field: Quang Ninh turns the medicinal root \"dia lien,\" limited by wild harvesting, into a cultivated crop<\/a>), it becomes easier to see what Mr. Vu is selling. What is for sale is not the seedlings themselves but the state of being able to show \"this is not of wild origin\"<\/strong> That was the deal.<\/p>\n For Mr. Vu's field, two snapshots at different times remain, in a local paper and a national paper. Because the definitions of the tallies and the reporting times differ, you cannot subtract one from the other, but the way the scale has moved can be read.<\/p>\nThe premise of 27 wild trees: why \"increasing\" works as a business<\/h2>\n
Tracking it in numbers: the year and a half from January 2025 to July 2026<\/h2>\n