Transect 104

Field crew at Phong Dien Nature Reserve in the Truong Son Mountains of Central Vietnam marking the start of transect 104 in their rattan inventory (see Song Thanh N.R. and  Field Books). This is 104 out of a total of 160 transects that they were required to sample. Image below provides a little context as to where the crew actually was. There's a road, a lot of forest - and not much else. Yellow line in the upper left is the border with Lao P.D.R. Spatial coordinates are included in case anyone wants to visit the site.  

Xishuangbanna

I spent a week at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden in August of 2004 looking at rattan specimens with Andrew Henderson (see Pressing Plectocomiopsis) in preparation for our expedition to northern Myanmar (see Hukaung Valley Rattan Survey). When I just couldn't stand to look at one more spiny herbarium sheet, I would always walk out to the Palm Garden, sit on a bench by the lily (Victoria) pond, and gaze out on the scene shown above.  [NOTE: Much of the collection at HITBC has been digitized and is available online. The labels, however, are still in Chinese].

Help Japan

You can help support the Japan disaster-relief effort by donating to the Red Cross. You can donate here through the official Red Cross website, or here, through iTunes if that is a more familiar/comfortable URL and you have iTunes installed. This is what Japan is facing. Sigh. Deep bows of gratitude to all who are moved to help.  

[NOTE: Donations to Japan's earthquake and tsunami victims can also be offered here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here, or here. Lot of recipes, but it's the hot bread that counts. Please give. Domo arigato].

Worth A Thousand Words

Lunar-like landscape surrounding main gold mine (see Hukaung Gold Mines) at Shimbweyeng inside (italics mine) the Hukaung Valley Wildlife Sanctuary in Kachin State, Myanmar. My current work in the Hukaung Valley (see Shinlonga) doesn't extend as far north as Shimbweyeng, so I have no idea about the current status of this mine - or the nature of any vegetation that may have grown back on the site. [NOTE: Image was taken in 2005].  

Chase The Tear

In December of 2009, Portishead released a single (and a video) to raise money for Amnesty International. The recording(s) were released on International Human Rights Day to mark the anniversary of the United Nations' historic "Universal Declaration of Human Rights". The video is beautifully shot and the music, the first offering from this somewhat reclusive band in several years, is really nice. I especially like Beth Gibbons doing the vocals sitting in a chair.

Winter sigh, summer's gone
Holding off tomorrow's sorrow

[NOTE: The "tear" referenced is that produced by ripping, not crying].

Size Matters II

Making herbarium specimens (see Herbarium Specimens and Moving the Collections Down the Ledo Road) can sometimes be really tedious and time-consuming. Especially when the plant material that you are trying to fit on a sheet of newspaper and press is almost 8 m long. Like the Arenga westerhoutii  Griff. leaf from northern Myanmar shown above. This whole massive structure is one leaf.  To make the specimen, you need a sample of the leaflets and rachis from the tip, middle and base of the leaf.  And if you are making replicate collections - which you always are, you need to do this six to eight times.  Which could involve about 50 sheets of newspaper and maybe 30 minutes or more of snipping, labeling, and pressing.  No wonder they call palms the "big game" of plant collecting.

[NOTE: That's me in the left foreground checking my GPS and looking decidedly uninterested in the whole procedure. The foot path that we are standing on is actually the Ledo Road].

Fearless (From The Archive)

"Any way that you could climb up there and get a couple of branches with flowers?"

Villagers that have grown up in the forest can be creative and fearless tree climbers. And this is free-climbing, i.e. with no ropes, belts, or back-ups. A quick scan of the Dipterocarpus tree revealed that it was covered with flowers.  And this species is a mast fruiter that only flowers and fruits every couple of years.  So I posed the question to my local assistant.  The image below shows him sizing up the tree and making a quick decision about the costs (to him) and the benefits (to me) of climbing it.

He decided to try it.  The image below shows him about 15 m up the tree, carefully climbing the lianas and dangling a long collecting pole that he has tied around his waist. Goes without saying, but these guys are fearless. [NOTE: The climb was a complete success and we got some beautiful specimens of Dipterocarpus oblongifolius Blume. The climber is a Dayak; the tree is one of several conspecifics growing in lowland forest in the Sanggau district of West Kalimantan].

Full disclosure: The actual question, posed in my halting Bahasa, was undoubtedly simply "bisa?" (Can you do it?).

Great Spirit Manifesting Dharma

Offered incense - and took pictures - last Sunday in the 49th day Memorial Service for the American Zen teacher and Soto priest, Surei Kenpo Darlene Cohen. Her Dharma name, Surei Kenpo, means Great Spirit Manifesting Dharma. And this she was. Completely.

The side altar had a wonderful brush painting by Darlene's teacher, Dairyu Michael Wenger (see Sumi-e). It shows Darlene making her way with her robes, traditional monk's traveling hat and staff - and brightly painted toenails.

The main altar had a lovely picture of Darlene taken by Susan Ji-on Postal at an EHZC sesshin.  Darlene's big smile is at least partially related to the altar flowers from this sesshin that she has stuck in her hair.  I am very fortunate to have had the opportunity to practice with this extraordinary teacher. [NOTE: More pictures from Darlene's Memorial Service are here].

Drying Rattan

Bundles of yamata (Calamus palustis Griff) cane laid out to dry at the Three Red Stars, Ltd. rattan yard in Myitkyina, Kachina State, Myanmar. We stopped here in 2005 to talk to the owners about the current rattan market in northern Myanmar before heading up into the Hukaung Valley (see Hukaung Valley Rattan Survey). 

Camu-camu (From the Archive)

From 1984 to 1987, I lived and did research along the Ucayali River in the Peruvian Amazon.  One of my study species was a small riparian shrub, Myrciaria dubia HBK McVaugh, known locally as "camu-camu". The fruits of camu-camu have the highest concentration of Vitamin C of any fruit in the world.  Oranges have 30 mg of ascorbic acid/100 g of pulp, rose hips have about 100 mg, and camu-camu, in a class by itself, has 3,100 mg of ascorbic acid/100 g of pulp. The species grows in extremely dense stands along the banks of ox-bow lakes.  I ate a lot of camu-camu fruit while I was studying the ecology of this species.  It made blisters on my lips...but I never got a cold.

[NOTES: The second image shows a fruit collector in Supay cocha near my study site in Peru.  This picture was on the front page of the Washington Post (below the fold) on June 29, 1989.  All images were scanned from slides.]

[MORE NOTES (added to re-post): There is a Wikipedia entry about Myrciaria dubia here. Not sure I agree with all of the information presented, and I am curious why there is no photo of the fruit. Or why none of my published work on the species is referenced. Sigh.]