Siargao Zingiber Project 2 - Etlingera fimbriobracteata

iuRon was the first to find one of these local ginger plants, and I wrote about them here.

I didn't realise at that time quite what a very strange plant this is.

If you look closely, you'll see a nascent bud to the left, a bud with about six yellow and red flowers open in the middle, and, to the right, what is presumably the next stage, a sort of mini-pineapple with the petals withered, and pink fruit developing.
Now, we haven't been watching these plants closely enough. (I've transplanted a few to my garden, where we can keep a eye on them).

Suddenly, at the next stage, they produce fruit, about 3 metres up, on long stems.

What's going on? How, exactly, does that mini-pineapple transform itself into a ten-foot fruit-bearer?

The only answer is to camp out next to one of the mini-pineapples, and photograph it, every hour, through the night.

Ron - get your sleeping-mat ready!


Update: 24/8/08. I was completely wrong on all of this. The small pineapple does NOT suddenly transform into fruit 10 feet above it, Instead, it's a different, but related plant that happened to grow in the same place, called Alpinia haenki (or macassarensis), which is even more rare.

Siargao Zingiber Project - Sidelining

For the first time, I got up off my bum, and went myself with my crew (Ron & Shedney), to find some new and exotic ginger plants reasonably nearby.
We went to Victor's Flying Fox Bar, built, like only a total crazy could do, out in the boonies, opposite a perfect jungle mountain, where the flying foxes do a grand fly-past every evening, dead on time at 2.5 minutes past dusk.

We walked along the edge of the mountain, and we did find a couple of new ginger plants (which I'm waiting to have identified).
But, more than that, we found some other strange plants that I don't have much of a clue about:

This is wild ubi, a purple yam, that, domesticated, is a great favourite here in the Philippines. It's even a top flavour for ice cream. Purple ice cream? It's delicious. Only in the Philippines.

And we found these, abandoned: Puso banana buds, but only the stripped skins, the buds taken off to make into a fabulous salad.

And then this one, known locally as padjaw. It's an aroid, but I don't know much more about it, and I don't know why it grows 'pretend peppers'.

Coconut Bubble

This is a coconut in the process of sprouting. It's sent out a small shoot through one of the three 'eyes' at the top of the coconut shell, and soon it will send out some roots through another one.

The roots will go down, while the shoot stays up, so the shell will remain on the ground but keel over, as the roots take hold.

The bubble, buwa, is the conversion of the water and flesh inside the coconut shell into an embryo of the future coconut tree. Amazing how alike this process is to mammal reproduction, where the womb holds and feeds the embryo.

This one is well on the way, so the bubble has almost filled the hard shell, while the roots haven't got going just yet. Much of the coconut flesh is still there. Give it time.

Now, if you can catch a coconut that hasn't quite reached this stage (where the bubble gets a little bit spongy) then you get this, and it's delicious.

It tastes like a sort of coconut marshmallow, juicy, fresh and sweet.

Pano'on - Local Candy - Bromeliad or What? - Part II

I first wrote about pano'on just a week ago, and things have developed rapidly. First I contacted Brandon McHenry, who identified my Dischidia or talikubo for me. He, in turn, suggested that pano'on was not a bromeliad at all, nor a relative of maize, but a relative of ginger, which was a total surprise to me.

Brandon also introduced me to John Mood, a world authority on ginger taxonomy, who confirmed the plant was probably Hornstedtia conoidea, which also grows in Borneo.

Well, I hadn't seen much more of the plant than a few ripening buds and a few leaves, which had made me think it was this: Zingiber mioga - Japanese Wild Ginger, which is commercially-grown in Japan (and now in New Zealand) for its young buds, which are a great delicacy.


The buds are shown here:
(Click photo to go to 'the scent of green bananas blog for recipes)

Well, this really got me thinking. If New Zealand farmers are canny enough to grow this stuff for export to Japan, why shouldn't we do the same here in Siargao? Looked easy to me; it's a perennial, so you plonk it in the ground, and pick a bit idly from time to time.

But if you look at the botanical drawing, you'll see that mioga has a white flower, whereas our pano'on's flowers turn out to have a brilliant deep red flower (top right). And the local people don't eat the buds, although they do eat the unripe berry pods (and so do rats and other forest rodents - we didn't find a single young bud on the specimens Ron brought back, from his second expedition on Thursday).

Ron also mentioned another ginger relative, locally known as kayaskason, which also has edible berries, growing at the top of a long stem, so I asked him to get some of those as well, plus anything else he could find. He came up trumps. Kayaskason turns out to be a species of Alpinia, or even a natural hybrid, and extremely rare. It seems strange that it is common enough here for the local people to give it a name.

Well, that's exciting enough, but this photo shows only the unripe seed pods. We've planted it in the garden, but I don't think I can wait for the flowers to come out, so I guess we'll have to go and get some, to finally find out what it is.

But the third wild ginger that Ron brought back turns out to be a little honey. You can see in this photo the yellow flowers and pink fruit. Here's another photo of the pink fruit.










This one, apparently, is an Etlingera fimbriobracteata.

Now that I know these marvels are to be found in the forests around here, I'll be looking out for them.

Santol Fruit

I can't do better than to quote The Daley News, an Australian tree nursery, on this fruit:

Fruit Tree of the Month
Santol - Sandoricum koetjape

Native to Asia the Santol is a large fast growing and attractive tree. In their native setting they can grow to around 45 m with a large buttressed trunk and branches low to the ground.
In cultivation they are more commonly seen as a 15 m specimen tree. In Asia the santol is valued not only for its fruits but it is also grown as a timber and shade tree, although the timber is not of high quality it does polish well.

The fruits are large, round and rough on the outside with a thick textured yellowish skin. The flesh is segmented around the 3-5 seeds, they are called lolly fruits as the flesh sticks firmly to the seeds and it is best removed and enjoyed by sucking the seeds clean. Do not be tempted to swallow the seeds.

I find these fruit (or at least the 'lolly' part) to be as insipid as so many other South East Asian fruit, a sort of jellified sweet flesh with a flavour so goddam subtle that I have difficulty describing it. And the flesh sticks to the seeds like slimy cotton wool. However,the orange skin is marvellous; very tart, and solid.

I've used it to make some very, very acceptable chutney, the kind that nearly substitutes for Branston Pickle, the essential ingredient for a genuine cheese-and-pickle sandwich.

Lato Seaweed Salad

I do love this stuff.

Koi-Koi, my neighbour, brings me some from time to time, often together with some tajum, sea urchin roe, and they go well together.

They taste like salty little grapes, bursting in the mouth in the same way as caviare, but they're a lot cheaper.

This kind is my favourite. The branches are like little green Walt Disney toadstools.

To eat them, all you do is collect them straight from the sea. If you haven't got fresh sea water to rinse them in, use a little vinegar. But make sure you do wash them; a lot of tiny crabs and shrimp live in the bunches, and you don't want to chomp those as well.

I also featured another kind of lato at: Seaweeds as Food

Pako Fern - Lunchtime Salad

This is pako fern; it grows naturally in the forests around here, and is gathered by women for sale in the local markets.

It doesn't rank very high on local food-value scales.

But it tastes wonderful, as a fresh salad, with the usual oil and vinegar dressing. It's crispy and tasty.

Here, it's thought of as an occasional delicacy, but otherwise as a famine food, the only thing you can find to eat after a typhoon or earthquake.

Last year, when exceptional rains, floods and landslides cut Lanuza (opposite my island on the 'mainland' of Mindanao) off from the outside world, this was all they had left to eat.

If the local people could somehow find a way to get this salad into Western supermarkets, they'd have a winner.
It's very cultivable.

Incidentally, when I talk about the 'usual oil and vinegar dressing', I'm not referring to all those fancy Mediterranean virgin olive oils and balsamic vinegars, that cost a fortune. I'm referring to our very own cold-pressed virgin coconut oil, and the vinegar that results from not drinking all the coconut sap tuba wine in time.

No sooner had I first written the draft of this, than I wanted to find more about this wonderful salad. Here is a photo of pako fern being served in a Vancouver restaurant, from vacationtime at Flickr. It looks as if these are the very top fiddlehead buds, braised lightly.

This is not so good; it's like the French, who braise lettuce, for god's sake. The Frogs don't know nuffink about cooking.


Here is the fern, growing wild, locally.

And, finally, here's a recipe for Kerabu pucuk pakis from a feast, everyday, who seem to come from Malaya, and are obviously interested in food, because they call themselves thedroolteam.

Pakis kerabu
2 cups pakis soft tips, washed and cut into 2" length
1 tablespoon dried prawns, washed and soaked

Dressing
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoon lime juice
1-2 bird's eye chillies, chopped
sugar, to taste

Blanch the pakis in boiling water for 2-3 minutes; rinse in cold water and drain.
Drain the dried prawns and chop or pound coarsely; fry in a dry pan without oil over medium heat until fragrant and golden.
Sprinkle a pinch of sugar on the dried prawn to caramelise and off the heat.
Mix together the dressing, adjust to suit your taste (our palates lean heavily to the sourish side); toss in well with the pakis and chill. Mix in the dried prawns to serve.

Malay foods seem to be a lot more subtle and interesting, than Filipino foods, and that puzzles me. Perhaps the Malays have a longer and more 'civilised' culture history than my neighbours on this small island?

Strange Fig Tree

This is a strange fig tree that grows in my garden. The fruit grow directly on the trunk of the tree, in bunches, quite unlike other figs, and the fruit come along every three or four months.

Sometimes birds do try and eat them, but there is not enough surface for them to perch and peck. So I left the coconut frond that fell down to give them some purchase. On a closer look, I found that the yellow figs are unripe. They go dark red as they ripen, and the birds certainly go for those.

I'm interested to see if this fig has a life style dependent on insects, as so many figs do.

Tomorrow (or maybe the next day, life being a little bit lazy) I'll get one of the figs and dissect it.

If there is a story at all, I'll post it here.


[Day 2 Well, it's now tomorrow, and here is a picture of the fruit. The yellow one is unripe, and the red one was very ripe and sticky. I couldn't see any insects in either (some figs have friendly relations with tiny wasps).

Anyway, I ate it, and I'm not dead yet.

By the way, the two wires crossing the photo above are my electricity supply; great bit of junction wiring to the left.

[Day 3] I've now realised that the rest of the world gets up in the morning a lot earlier than I do, so this morning I got up and watched that bloody fig tree.

They're all there, from the sunbirds, to that-bright-yellow-bird-I-don't-the name-of, to the imported European sparrows (who chat with a Spanish, not a Cockney accent).

Wonderful sight, even through the haze of a normal morning hangover.

DH Lawrence wrote this about figs:

The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist,
honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.
Then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom with your lips.
But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack, and take out the flesh in one bite.
Every fruit has its secret.
The fig is a very secretive fruit.

As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic:
And it seems male.
But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female.
The Italians vulgarly say, it stands for the female part; the fig-fruit:
The fissure, the yoni,
The wonderful moist conductivity towards the centre.
Involved,
Inturned,
The flowering all inward and womb-fibrilled;
And but one orifice.
The fig, the horse-shoe, the squash-blossom.
Symbols.
There was a flower that flowered inward, womb-ward;
Now there is a fruit like a ripe womb.
It was always a secret.
That's how it should be, the female should always be secret.
There never was any standing aloft and unfolded on a bough
Like other flowers, in a revelation of petals;
Silver-pink peach, venetian green glass of medlars and sorb-apples,
Shallow wine-cups on short, bulging stems
Openly pledging heaven:
Here's to the thorn in flower! Here is to Utterance!
The brave, adventurous rosaceæ

I'm sorry, I can't go on with this. It's the plea of a Northern Englishman to a fruit he probably only tasted once in his life. It's nice stuff, but isn't he over-doing it a bit?
Rest of it at http://www.kalliope.org/digt.pl?longdid=lawrence2001061702

Don't Go Down to the Swamps Today...

...because the Nipa Palm flower may get you.

The nipa flower's the nearest thing to a space monster that I've ever seen. They look as if they're about to come bursting and bubbling out like distinctly unfriendly extra-terrestrials. Just like Day of the Triffids. And they're big.

The flower usually grows more than a metre high, and in the fetid darkness of the brackish swamps that nipa palms inhabit, they stand out like, well, aliens.

Later, a seed head will grow, with about 40 large seeds, each enclosed in a strong husk, the whole about the size of a basketball. The seeds themselves are often called 'vegetable ivory' and are reputed to be carved by native tribesmen somewhere or other.

I tried carving them myself, but they didn't live up to their advance billing.

The nipa palm (Nypa frutescens) itself is quite innocuous, as are the flowers, of course.

The leaves are used as roofing material , widely available as roughly 4ft x 15" 'tiles', at about 8ç each. They don't last a lifetime, but they are waterproof, and a lot cooler than the corrugated iron sheets that are nowadays replacing them.

They don't need to be 'farmed' as such, but nipa stands do have owners, so be careful to ask if you want a nipa seed head as a souvenir.

The flowers, when they have grown seed heads, are tapped, like coconut flowers, for their sweet sap, which is then distilled to make pa-oroi, a strong-tasting liquor which, thankfully, is very cheap. (It's the local hooch that I mention in my blog title; I usually buy it by the 5-gallon jerry can).

I keep my hooch in a plastic water dispenser with a tap. It is half-filled with coconut-shell charcoal, that filters out the fairly awful natural taste of the pa-oroi.

My original intention was to make fruit-flavoured liquors of the stuff, by macerating some of the local fruits in it, but each time I tried that, I took to tasting it frequently, and none of my efforts ever matured, as they should have done, for more than a month.

Cheers!

PS 1 I just found I did this same story about a year ago at: http://smallislandnotes.blogspot.com/2007/10/pa-oroi.html Shows how forgetful pa-oroi makes you.

PS 2 A wonderful photo-essay on the making of pa oroi, or laksoy, as the Butuanons call it (about 3 hours drive from Surigao City is at EatingAsia:
http://eatingasia.typepad.com/eatingasia/2008/04/sago-isnt-the-o.html

Barringtonia - Bito'On - Sea Poison Tree

I'm getting into this digital painting lark now, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

This is a crudely altered photo of a Barringtonia or bito'on tree flower.

The tree grows near the shore almost everywhere in the coastal areas of Island SE Asia and Oceania.

It's a wonderful shade tree, and when it's in the mood, produces these fabulous flowers, about three inches across, with a fan of stamens (pistils?) at dusk.

The next morning, they are moribund and abandoned on the ground, as this one was.

A lovely specimen of the tree used to grow in the churchyard in General Luna, but the holy Catholic vandals of that institution cleared it of this and several other beautiful trees.

But Barringtonia doesn't only produce flowers. The fruit look a bit like squared-off apples, and they're valuable. They float very well, so they're widely used as net-floats (and also as the way for Barringtonia to colonise new shorelines).

The area of their distribution is very, very near that of Austronesian languages, and of the natural distribution of coconuts.

And the flesh of the fruit is poisonous to fish. Don't fiddle about with big, bright yellow lures, just zap 'em.

See more about Barringtonia here : (Apologies if you don't go straight to the bookmark; I haven't updated this page for ages).