This species is among the most remarkable conifers and one of the true giants of the island of Taiwan, occurring at elevations between 1000 and 2900 m. Our team's documenting the conifers and their habitats in Formosa was coordinated by the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (T.F.R.I.) and made possible with support from both the I.D.R.I., Inc. and Earthwatch, Center for Field Research.

To document Fitzroya, the "redwood of the south" and the 'National Tree' of Chile, was another exciting task for our expedition in 1996. It was a real treat to work in the magnificent Araucaria forests – huge stands, many old trees, and incredibly beautiful scenery on the foothills of Volcán Llaima.

Lepidothamnus fonkii is the southernmost conifer in the world, reaching 55°S in the Magallanes region of Chile and Argentina's Patagonia and occurring in habitats from sea level to about 600 m.

In an article on our findings in Mexico we published this remarkable plant as Pseudotsuga menziesii var. oaxacana Debreczy & Rácz (Phytologia, 1995) but to accommodate this plant in the current understanding of the Douglas fir taxonomy, finally discussed it in Conifers Around the World within the long accepted variety name "var. glauca".

Mexico, with its 93+ species and varieties of conifers, is a very special place for any conifer explorer and was a must place for our Dendrological Atlas project. Given the goal – documenting possibly all conifer taxa in Mexico within a realistic time frame – seemed and was indeed a huge task.

This plant was described in 1910 by Michel Gandoger in the bulletin of the French Botanical Society at species rank. It took over half a century when it was reclassified as a subspecies of Juniperus oxycedrus (Amaral Franco, 1963) and later treated at variety rank under the same species (John Silba, 1984).

This juniper has a broad distribution in the mountains of central Asia, from the Altai through the Tien Shan, the Pamirs and the Karakoram, with an altitudinal range of 1950 to 4100 m.

Documenting this species requires to hike Vietnam's tallest mountain peak, Fan Si Pan, sometimes spelled as Fansipan or Fan Xi Pan (3143 m), part of the Hoang Lien Son (range). In December 2003, this was made possible with financial help from I.D.R.I. and the guidance of Dr. Dzuong Duc Huyen, country officer of the Prosea (Plant Resources of Southeast Asia) Project, and deputy head of the Botanical Department of the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (Hanoi).