The Distribution of Bitti (Vitex cofassus) in Wallacea Region

Populations of tree species used in the boat building, mainly bitti (Vitex cofassus) continually decreasing rapidly because of high demand and reason related to deforestation. In fact some lower quality wood species is used to replace it. The idea of establishment of forest boat as an effort of Wallacea’s species conservation and fulfillment of the basic materials needs to be supported. Some explorations were done in August and September 2008 by research ship, namely Cinta Laut in order to know the distribution of bitti in Indonesia which become one step toward the forest boat. Some islands in Province of South Sulawesi, West Sulawesi, Central Sulawesi and Gorontalo were visited.

Data were also collected in June 2009 and January 2010 through study of specimen of bitti in National Herbarium “Bogoriense” and Herbarium of Faculty of Forestry, Universitas Gadjah Mada. In addition, some related publications used to indicate other locations where bitti has been found and utilized. Bitti distributes in the most of Eastern part of Indonesia. Those are Sulawesi Island, Moluccas Islands, Aru Islands and Misool Island in Papua as well as Lesser Sunda Islands. Two varieties were found, i.e. V. cofassus var. α typica and V. cofassus var. timorensis.

Source:

Syahbudin, A. Osozawa, K. and Ninomiya I. (2010) The Distribution of Bitti (Vitex cofassus) in Wallacea Region. Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation 2010 (ATBC 2010) Meeting, Bali, Indonesia: 156.

Presented: ATBC 2010 meeting, 19-23 July 2010/Bali, Indonesia.