Volume 38(3,4), 1999 
55 
Institute of Plant Protection of the People's 
Republic of China, Beijing, to the University of 
Hawai'i. Mr. Chen informed Dr. Clifford Smith, 
then Cooperative Park Studies Unit (CPSU) leader, 
and me that he was familiar with YHR, the range 
of which extended to parts of China. This led to 
the establishment of a cooperative agreement 
between Mr. Chen's research agency and the 
CPSU (now Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit) for 
YHR biocontrol research in China. Under this 
agreement I traveled to China to conducted field 
exploration in China for YHR in the company of 
Mr. Chen and his colleagues in June - July, 1999. 
Prior to my arrival in China, Mr. Chen conducted 
literature searches and contacted professional 
colleagues in various southern locations of China 
where YHR was thought to occur. Through these 
leads, he suggested an itinerary for our travel to 
these sites, and also arranged with the local 
agricultural agency at each site for ground 
transportation, including a car and a driver, to the 
sometimes remote field areas. (Such assistance 
with ground transportation was essential; I saw no 
evidence of a car rental industry in China). Mr. 
Chen, Dr. Duan Xiayu, an expert in powdery 
mildews, and I traveled from Beijing to the 
southern tip of China in Yunnan Province near the 
Vietnamese and Laotian borders, where we 
searched for YHR in rural areas between the towns 
of Jinghong and Menghai and to the west of 
Menghai. My Chinese colleagues showed 
photographs of the plant to local farmers and other 
residents to solicit their help in pinpointing stands 
of this species. We received cooperation, 
sometimes enthusiastically, from almost everyone 
approached for assistance. Such local assistance 
was especially helpful in concentrating our efforts 
and greatly facilitated our time efficiency. 
Although we were successful in finding YHR at 
many of the locations we searched, it was rarely 
found in great abundance at any given site, usually 
being limited to one to several scattered plants. 
Local farmers told us that YHR had no use, and 
that they chopped it out as a weed where it 
occurred in agricultural lands. This information 
seemed to vary somewhat from literature reports 
from India describing YHR fruit as being of some 
value for human consumption. 
Notwithstanding its lack of local abundance at 
the Jinghong and Menghai sites, evidence of insect 
activity was readily apparent as leaf feeding, leaf 
binding, bud feeding and shoot tip boring. A 
number of beetle and lepidopterous species were 
associated with this damage. This contrasted with 
a relative lack of diseases on YHR. For the most 
part we found only infrequent, individually 
occurring fungal leaf spots that appeared to be of 
little consequence. 
Other sites visited in Yunnan Province included 
the "Rock Forest," a preserved national park-like 
area featuring eroded rock formations near Lunan 
to the southeast of the principal city of Kunming in 
the central eastern area of the province. Mature 
plants of YHR were scattered individually among 
other shrubby vegetation types. In addition to the 
leaf feeders, leaf binders and tip borers that we had 
found at the southern Yunnan sites, we found exit 
holes of a stem borer on dead or dying stems at the 
Rock Forest. Individual plants of YHR were also 
found along the road sides and on the edges of rice 
fields between Kunming and Lunan, most of which 
exhibited evidence of leaf feeding and leaf binding 
as their most prominent damage. Diseases were 
again much less in evidence and appeared of no 
effect to plant health. 
As a note of interest, while in Kunming we 
found R. ellipticus var. obconiatus, labeled as 
such, in the "Medicinal Plant" section of a 
botanical garden. Purported uses were for ailments 
such as stomachache and digestive problems. 
We visited Sichuan Province, north of Yunnan 
Province, traveling down the Yangtze River from 
the major city of Chongqing to Fengdu, a hilly area 
with which Mr. Chen was personally familiar. At 
sites in terraced farmland and steep rocky slopes 
near the town of Shuren, several kilometers to the 
west of Fengdu, we again found individually 
scattered YHR with much of the previously seen 
insect fauna, although we were not able to find 
evidence of the stem borers we had seen near 
Lunan. In the Fengdu area we found a leaf rust 
fungus, Hamaspora rubi-sieboldii, a fungus 
recorded from other Rubus hosts in Southeast Asia 
(Monoson, 1969). 
Herbarium records at Southwest Agricultural 
University at Bei Bei, west of Chongqing, 
indicated that a number of Rubus species, 
including R. ellipticus, had in the past been 
collected in the nearby Jinyun Mountain area. 
Based on these collections, we searched for YHR 
at this site, but were unsuccessful in finding the 
plant. 
