my Kambatik Botanic Garden

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Inspiration from walking at Botanic Island One.

Views of Botanic Island One (2021)

Its been raining intermittently since early this morning. Little outside work can be done. So its back to taking some shots of the Botanic Island One from its surrounding areas.

Note: All photos taken using handset Redmi 9A.

View looking South-west. Botanic Island is at left of the pix.

View looking North-east.

View looking east

View looking North.

The Year is 2021

Today (21 Jan'21) I'm revisiting this blog. I feel its time to update on the Kambatik Botanic Garden after the last posting done 10 years ago. Ten years sounds so long BUT no. Working on the Kambatik Park has been a labour of love. And plants do take time to mature and the park has grown in size and age. There's so much new things to share and and old stories to be told as the botanic gardens grow up.

Friday, December 24, 2010

Small stream

The stream meandering at Zone E and showing better flow after the clearing works.

Today it rained light over the farm and thus I was able to brave the rain for a short but important task. At around 3.00 pm I decided to widen the stream, clear the sides of roots and debris ( twigs, silt) in order to improve the flow. I was working in light rain because I wanted to see those bends and corners of the stream that hold on the traffic flow. I took me about three hours of raw power to finish the job. I was happy to note how the stream improved tremendously once the debris were cleared and the sides widened. The area that I focused today was at Zone D and E. The above picture shows the stream as it meanders a section of the Heliconia Valley at Zone E area. The long shot view shows a tiny white flower at the center of the picture. It is the White Costus ( Costus speciosus ) as shown in close-up at the inset to the left. Somewhere to the right of the picture is seen a banana tree and below is the medium shot of the fruiting tree.

There are a couple of banana varieties at the garden. Bananas belong to the genus Musa and as you can recall the popular heliconias are also of that banana family ( Family - Musaceae). I intend to build up a collection of edible varieties next year. CU of the picture above shows the purplish terminal head which Malays call " Jantung". In Malaysia the jantung are favourite for salad, of course to be eaten with the ever popular " Belacan" paste or cooked in coconut milk called " Santan". The popular banana cultivars that are readily available in Bintulu tamu or jungle produce market are the " Pisang Berangan" ( Note: " Pisang" in Malay means banana), Pisang Embun, Pisang-pisang, Pisang Hotel, Pisang Keling or Rastali, Pisang Emas, Pisang Kapok, Pisang Tanduk, and many more. Ripe bananas contain about 27% carbohydrate and surprisingly very little cholesterol or fats. They are a good source of vitamin C . The banana varieties that are commonly used for making banana fritters are the Pisang-pisang, Pisang Kapok and the Pisang Tanduk. All three are my favourites too!.