Where'd all those durian trees come from?

Simple question with, in this case, an obvious answer.  The image below was taken behind a small lean-to ("pondok") in a managed forest orchard (see tembawang) in Bagak, West Kalimantan (see Bapaks from Bagak) during durian season. Villagers would stay in the orchard all night picking up the durian fruits that had fallen - and eating a large number of them. They'd throw the woody husks and seeds into a heap behind the pondok.

The next photo was taken behind the pondok a year later.  Every one of the plants shown in the foreground is a durian seedling. These will be selectively weeded every couple of years, and, eventually, at least one of them will make it up to the canopy and start producing fruit. [NOTE: There were dozens of pondoks scattered throughout the tembawangs of Bagak during durian season.  A wonderful place to spend an evening regenerating the forest].

Bubu Weaver

Bubus are cylindrical fish traps made by villagers at Danau Sentarum (see Danau Sentarum and Cordage) in West Kalimantan. The traps are made out of rattan, and each one requires about 500 canes.  The preferred rattan to use for bubus is Calamus schistoacanthus, or "duri antu", one of only three rattan species found in local flooded forests. The stem fiber of C. schistoacanthus is extremely tolerant of daily submersion in the lake, and a well-made bubu can last four to five years. A dedicated fisherman may have dozens of these traps. [NOTE: More about the use of rattan at Danau Sentarum can be found here].

Shingle Maker

A Dayak man from the village of Ensibau in the Sanggau District of West Kalimantan splitting bolts of Dipterocarpus wood to make shingles. He is working in one of the village's many tembawangs.  I visited Ensibau in 1992 (thx, Judy), ran some inventory transects, and discovered that the village was managing over 120 tree species per hectare in their tembawangs. [NOTE: The entire State of New York contains about 150 different species of trees].

Peat Farmer

Pak Sukri from Punggur, West Kalimantan (see String of Pearls) is one of the best farmers I have ever met.  Even more so given that he is successfully farming a substrate that agronomists will tell you is unproductive, i.e. peat soils. Deep peat soils.  Over a period of several years, he drains, compresses, and carefully burns the peat. When he has reduced the peat layer to within a meter or so of the mineral soil underneath (now enriched by the slow release of nutrients from the organic material above), he  uses double-transplanted seedlings with long roots and a 2 meter dibble stick to start planting rice.  The rice seedlings are tapping into the mineral soil; the peat simply provides support and continual moisture. I am convinced that Pak Sukri could figure out a way to farm the moon. [NOTE: Elysa worked with Pak Sukri and took this photo (thx, Elysa); pineapples, cassava, rice, coconuts, and taro are visible in his field].

Basketmaker

Nice Dayak lady from a small village in the Sanggau district of West Kalimantan sitting on the front porch of her house with an assortment of rattan baskets.  She was getting ready to go work in her rice field, which prompted me to comment on how stylishly she was dressed.  She agreed to let me take a picture after I said that. [NOTE: The red tinge on her lips is betel nut (Areca catechu), not lipstick.]

String of Pearls

The Banjarese farmers in Punggur on the coast of West Kalimantan create diverse agroforestry systems by draining, burning, and slowly getting rid of the peat that underlies local forests. A network of canals - dug by hand - grid the area and regulate the daily tidal flow.

Coconuts are one of the most important plant products during the early developmental stages of these systems. To get the coconuts to market, they string them together in long chains and float them out in the canals.

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].

Bapaks from Bagak

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 (see Illipe 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.]

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.

Illipe Nut II

Illipe nuts come in a wide variety of sizes and shapes. Irregardless of the size of the seed produced, all species of illipe nut flower and fruit synchronously at unpredictable intervals of from 2 to 10 years. This reproductive behavior, known as "mast fruiting",  is thought to be an evolutionary response to excessive seed predation. What this means from a commercial standpoint, however, is that the availability of seeds from year to year is almost impossible to predict.  Try explaining that to your buyers. [NOTE: Mast fruiting is thought to limit the abundance of frugivores and seed predators in the forest by concentrating their food supply into one brief period every few years when they are swamped by more food than they can posisble eat.]