Bapaks From Bagak (From the Archive)

Pak Afong (with the baseball cap) and Pak Po'on (with the towel), both Selako Dayaks from the village of Bagak Sawah in West Kalimantan, helped a lot with my research on illipe nuts at the Raya-Pasi Nature Reserve (seeIllipe Nut III). Pak Afong was the official forest guard at Raya-Pasi, and he was the one who first told me about the annually fruiting illipe nut and helped me lay out and monitor my research plots. He was also the one who stopped me from stepping on the cobra (thx, Afong). Pak Po'on, an older gentleman who always went to the field in flip-flops, would help out when Pak Afong was not available. Po'on loved to talk and was an enthusiastic kretek smoker. The only thing that he would bring to the field was his towel and parang, so whenever it rained we would both hunker down under my poncho. Invariably, Pak Po'on would light up a kretek and start telling a story, usually about the old days during the Japanese occupation. The smoke under the poncho would get so thick that I couldn't see his face. It was a pleasure to work with both of these men. [NOTES: Pak Po'on's parang is stuck in the durian tree to the left of his head. The Indonesian word for tree is pohon.]

Corpse Flower

Rafflesia is a unique genus of flowering plants. The members of this group are parasitic and have no stems, leaves, or true roots.  Many of them are pollinated by carrion flies and, to attract these insects, their flowers smell strongly of rotting meat. The common name for the plant, "corpse flower", describes the floral odor quite well.  Finally, some species of Rafflesia (e.g. Rafflesia arnoldii) are renown for producing the largest single flower in the world, the corolla obtaining a diameter of over a meter. 

My study site at the Raya-Pasi Nature Reserve in West Kalimantan (see Illipe Nut III) contained a healthy population of Rafflesia tuan-mudae.  The young flower buds, which would pop-up unpredictably in the forest, were the size of croquet balls. The image above shows a new flower next to an older blossom which has started to decompose. [NOTE: The vines growing on the tree in the background are Tetrastigma (VITACEAE), the obligate host for Rafflesia].

Illipe Nut III

Gunung Poteng, Raya-Pasi Nature Reserve, West Kalimantan.

Shorea atrinervosa. [NOTE: Metal tag with number on the lower right of the trunk; white plot stake in the foreground.]

Given the obvious supply issues caused by the unpredictable fruiting of illipe nut trees, I was very interested in trying to find an illipe nut tree that fruited every year. Soon after arriving to West Kalimantan in 1989, I went to the Raya-Pasi Nature Reserve north of Pontianak in the Sambas district.  We stopped in Bagak Sawah, a Dayak village near the reserve, to pick up Pak Afong, the park warden. As we were walking to the forest, I casually asked Afong if he knew of any annually fruiting illipe nut trees.  He said he did, and then proceeded to show me several dozen large illipe nut trees that I later determined to be Shorea atrinervosa. The forest floor was carpeted with the seedlings and saplings of S. atrinervosa.  This was surprising because the year before had not been a mast year, and none of the other illipe nut species in West Kalimantan had produced any seed. 

I spent the next three years studying a marked population of Shorea atrinervosa trees in Raya-Pasi to see if Pak Afong was right about the annual fruiting behavior of this illipe nut species.  He was.  A more detailed account of the story can be found here.