Plants from Bario

All the pictures was taken during my short visit to Bario.

Plagiostachys crocydocalyx

Zingiberaceae, or the Ginger family, is a family of flowering plants consisting of aromatic perennial herbs with creeping horizontal or tuberous rhizomes, comprising ca. 52 genera and more than 1300 sp., distributed throughout tropical Africa, Asia and the Americas.

During my trip to Lambir Hill NP, i found one species of wild ginger which known as Plagiostachys crocydocalyx. In Iban, this species called banjang and it is edible. It is a tall herbs easily recognizable by the inflorescence breaking through the leaf sheaths and thus appearing lateral on the leafy shoot, while in fact it is terminal.

Those 2 picture above representing the inflorescence and fruits of Plagiostachys crocydocalyx. It is actually a poorly known group of gingers due to the early disintegration of the inflorescence in many species into a mucilaginous mass that make studies of herbarium specimens difficult or impossible. Basically, this giant clump-forming plant has an enormous, slimy inflorescence and the flowers are yellow.

The scientific name refers to the woolly calyx & is base on collections made in Sarawak in 1865-67 by Italian botanist Beccari. The distribution is throughout Borneo.

Black Pepper......

Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering perennial woody vine in the Piperaceae, growing up to 4 metres in height on supporting trees or poles. Cultivated for its fruits which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. Black and white pepper is one of the important spice in Sarawak. Black and white pepper is produced from the semi-ripen berries of the pepper plant. White pepper consists of the seed only, with the fruit skins is removed by soaking fully ripe berries in water for about a week.

The leaves are alternate, entire, five to ten centimetres long and three to six centimetres broad. The flowers are small, produced on pendulous spikes 4 - 8 cm long at the leaf nodes, the spikes lengthening to 7 - 15 cm as the fruit matures.