VietNamNet Bridge – Cam lo, or chanh rung (wild lemon) as called by local people have been being hunted over the last month following a rumor that it is a panacea which can cure hundreds of diseases.

Despite the high risks from poisonous snakes and mosquitoes, hundreds of farmers have been flocking to the jungle in Son Hoa district of the central province of Phu Yen to hunt for cam lo trees.

“This is a very dangerous job,” said Tuan, a hunter. “You may fall into traps, or become the victims of poisonous snakes and mosquitoes.”

However, the dangers could not prevent local people from going to the forests to look for the precious tree. This has become a major means of income of many households in the mountainous locality.

The month in the early dry season proves to be the best time for people to go to the forest to look for cam lo trees. Someone may find two or three trees a day, but others can only find one tree after a week long. However, this is enough to encourage people to go more deeply into the forest.

According to An, a hunter, cam lo trees have been growing in a wild in the deep forest. In the past, the trees were chopped down for sale at VND500,000 per kilo.

However, since the day the local people whispered in each others’ ears that the trees can help cure hypertension, gout, backache and intestinal diseases, its price has soared by tens of times.

“Previously, it took me only one hour to find ten kilos of cam lo trees, which then was used to cure backache. However, the trees are rarely seen in the forest. They might have been chopped down already,” An said.

As the tree is believed to help cure a lot of diseases, it has become very expensive. A kilogram of the dry wild herb now can be sold for VND1.5 million per kilo.

The high price of the herb has prompted hundreds of people, men and women, old and young, from the locality and neighboring provinces, to give up farming and flock there to hunt for the trees, thus causing a chaos to the locality.

Tuan, a local farmer, affirmed that not only the people in Phu Yen, but the urbanites from Hanoi and HCM City, and even Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese) have also been ordering the trees for medicine.

The high demand is feared to lead to the extirpation of the trees. “If you want to find cam lo trees now, you have to go to the forest in midnight, when you don’t have to compete with other hunters,” Tuan said.

He went on to say that since cam lo trees now cannot be found in near places, people now have to go to mountainous areas or neighboring jungles. Some people said they have gone to Krong Pa in Gia Lai province to find cam lo.

However, the efforts of the hundreds of people who have been risking their lives to find cam lo trees may become in vain, because no one can say for sure about the medical uses of the trees.

The owner of a medicinal herb shop in Tuy Hoa City said cam lo could be a branch of the “xao tam phan”, or Paramignya trimera family which is believed to help cure some diseases. However, he affirmed that no herb can curb all kinds of diseases.