Hort Log

Many years ago, pictures from a giant photo book from the library scarred me for life. I had forgotten to jolt down the name of the book but managed to scan a few pictures from it....


Nepal’s Terai lowlands is the site of some of the greatest animal massacre during early 1900s, when various prime ministers from the Rana Dynasty tried to get cosy with British Royals by organising massive shikars or royal hunts....

Gristly body counts:
1877: Prince Albert was reported to kill at least 6 tigers in a day and not sure what else (with the help of 700 tame elephants)
1893: Archduke Franz Ferdinand killed 18 tigers, at least1 panther, 2 elephants and "anything that moved" including monkeys and fowls (with the help of a thousand men and 200 elephants)

1911: King George with his 12 thousand henchmen and 600 elephants massacred 18 rhinos, 39 tigers, 4 sloth bears
1938: Lord Linlithgow and his entourage was reported to slaughter 120 tigers, 27 leopards, 15 bears and 38 rhinos

Ref
(1)Travels in search of the luscious substance, Tim Ecott.
(2)1762, On Experiences, Bezaar Zimmermann

Ref: Curtis's botanical magazine, 1997, 82-86.

When modern Singapore's founding father Stamford Raffles returned to this tiny island in 1822, he found himself in a rough patch with William Farquhar, the deputy he empowered to govern this island before he sailed to Bencoolen to further his ambitions. Farquhar's apparent laissez faire style of governance was just not of his liking, although the local businesses were having a roaring good time, not just in mainstream commerce, mind you, but also in gambling, opium trade, slavery and other unmentionables that were part and parcel of the roaring good time.

Raffles would have none of it, and promptly outlawed all of these.... his strict moralistic upbringing clashing heads on with the old man and his pro-business ideas....

In between the reeling and dealing, Raffles took to exploring the woods with his botanist friend, Nathaniel Wallich, an activity he was known to enjoy very much. During one of their excursions in Singapore's wilds, they found this strange ant-harbouring Dischidia vine.
Each vine was observed to bear two types of leaf, one that looks like small flat tortoise shell hollowed out on the inside and the other that looks kind of like pitchers of Nepenthes with a very small opening. For wandering ants seeking a roof over their heads, these leaves would draw them like a pundit to a soapbox, a gambler to a casino or any man left standing, after the Decepticons' onslaught, to Megan Fox....

....in gratitude, the tenants would crap and leave whatever bodily leftovers inside the leaf, providing the malnourished vine a source of recycled energy. At times, the ants may even be called up to defend their abode from parasites or hungry herbivores...or curious botanists !
The ants' leftovers are much appreciated, as this cross section of one of the hollow leaves show. Roots extend hungrily deep into the ant nest to suck up whatever is available.

Many Dischidia species have modified leaves serving as ant hotels; this species, however, is the largest one. In 1831, Wallich described this plant in his book Plantae Asiatic Rariores and proceeded to name this plant Dischidia rafflesiana, in memory of his good friend who, by then, had passed. However, it was later found to be synonymous with a plant named Collyris major, described some twenty years earlier, so after a taxonomic revision and applying the strict nomenclature rule, this plant should now be correctly called Dischidia major.

The name had changed, but the plant's the same. The ants don't care a hoot. Even Sir Stamford, I suspect, might not be stirred - after all he already had the largest flower in the world named after him.

But I'd bet he would be reeling if he knew that this island nation he had founded just gave out its first gambling license to a casino, almost two hundred years after he out-lawed it.

A 1819 water colour painting by a Chinese painter named Ah Kow, literally meaning dog. Many painters comissioned by the British to make plant illustrations remained anonymous and they rarely signed their names in the work.
It is believed that this plant is Cyrtandra pendula, a common Gesneriad from Malaysia. In the forest of Pahang, at the base of a tall rock face, there was a patch of muddy area where we found big localised clumps of this plant growing in deep shade. Some of them are in flowers, which are bigger than typical Cyrtandra blooms and quite sturdy looking. The leaves of some of them are variegated so they are pretty ornamental. This plant is widespread throughout West Malaysia and has even been recorded in Singapore.

"(C.B.) Robinson* was collecting plants which were described by Rumphius in Ambon for a taxononomic revision. At the same time he was collecting in a certain locale several misfortunes befell the local inhabitants and they attributed their bad luck to a red (or red headed) demon in the forest. When Robinson (who was red headed) walked out of the forest, the natives became alarmed and suspicious. Robinson who must have been hungry or thirsty asked for a coconut to be cut for him....instead of asking for a kelapa (coconut) to be cut, he said "kepala" (head). The natives did just that and C.B. Robinson joined the ranks of many martyrs who gave their life for science."

*Charles Budd Robinson, Canadian botanist, murdered on 5 Dec 1913.
From Joseph Arditti, Malayan Orchid Review V23/89

"Why should the flower be so extraordinarily big and out of proportion to the rest of the body , the threads hidden within the tissue of the vine ? Its wide spreading petals cannot assist in the dispersal of its scent, as the tail spadix of the titan arum almost certainly does.... Plants, like any other living things, are ruled by cost-efficiency budgets. The food and energy they expend in growing flowers, leaves or any other organs must normally bring a commensurate advantage of some kind. But Rafflesia may not be so curbed. It does not, after all, earn the food it expends. *It takes it straight from the vine. Provided that the vine is not weakened by the loss to the point of death, there seems to be no limit to the amount the Rafflesia may extract and therefore no limit to the size of the flower it constructs. Maybe an unearned income in the plant world, as elsewhere, can lead to profligacy and extravagance on a truly monumental scale." 

*Rafflesia is a parasite on Tetrastigma vine.

From "The Private life of plants"

"Finding a flower with such a such a *brief life is clearly not easy .... a never-to-be-forgotten thrill....It was so out of scale with every other plant around it that it seemed to belong to another world, to have landed perhaps from outer space. For some indefinable reason I felt that it would not be surprising to see it make some convulsive movement." "Such a gigantic inflorescence seems unnecessarily large to attract pollinators as small as sweat bees or even carrion beetles. However, its size is more likely connected with the pungency and distribution of its odour than the size of its pollinators.
To produce its perfume, the plant raises its internal temperature secreted in its heart. The perfume then emerges from a slit in the side of the spadix. It would be more accurate, therefore, to compare the spadix with a factory chimney rather than a church spire, and plainly the taller it is, the more widely it will disperse its scent. And it is indeed spectacularly successful in doing so, for the villagers who had guided us to the flower told us that even they had discovered it by sniffing in the air from fifty yards away."

From "The private life of plants".