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Schima superba var. superba is an important native and plantation species in Taiwan and S. superba var. kankaoensis is a variety of S. superba var. superba. Since there is no reli-able morphological characteristic to distinguish the two of them, we tried to use a new technique, random amplified polymorphic DNA(RAPD), to study the taxonomic identity of the two species. Twenty arbitrary sequenced primers(10 nucleotides in length) were selected to proceed RAPD-PCR. One hundred and forty seven bands were recorded and 90(%) of them were polymorphic bands. DNA markers generated by primers U2, T1, V5 and X11 have specific bands that can differentiate S. superba var. superba from S. superba var. kankaoensis. These results indicate that the two species do have some levels of genetic variation.In Nei''s similarity matrix, S. superba var. superba has higher variation within population(1-F=0.150∼0.314) than that in S. superba var. kankaoensis(1-F=0.110∼0.289). The cause of this variation may due to the former species spreading widely in Taiwan that may generate higher genetic variation than the latter species that is restricted in Heng-Chun peninsula. Based on the dendrogram generated by the RAPDistance program, when the genetic distance is equal to 0.400, the two species can be separated intotwo groups. However when the genetic distance reduced to 0.213, the S. superba var. superba population can be further divided into three subgroups. This may due to the samples originally collected from plots in Hue-Sun Experimental Forest Station were geographically separated long enough to diverge. On the other hand, samples collected from the S. superba var. kankaoensis population in Heng-Chun peninsula also geo-graphically separate enough to diverge into three subgroups.
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