I promised a report from highland Sumatra. Armed with Comber (whose output I respect more with every trip, but whose oeuvre consumes most of one's baggage allowance) I spent ten days in the Karo highlands.
This is utterly different from the lowland forest I described some months ago. Temperatures seldom rise above 26C or fall below 15C; soils are deep volcanic fluff and rain comes frequently. Ridges are capped with 30m pines, the volcano flanks with dense mixed forest, of which spiny pandanus is a major component. Active vulcanism means that some soils are extremely acid, creating space fro rhododendron mats above 2000m. One thus has the happy experience of being buzzed by hornbills and hooted at by howler troupes in a misty pine forest, whilst spotting orchids. This said, the orchids are extremely local in focus, and extremely dense on specific trees, as seems to be their general habit. One sees a tree plastered with Coelogyne amongst hundreds that lack a single plant. Whilst the epiphytes in some areas are virtual orchid monocultures - Bulbophyllum, Eria, Coelogyne - the orchid fraction in other areas is sparse, but much more species diverse. One often finds 'gardens' in which ferns, several orchids and other epiphytes co-exist. There were no signs of over-collection. I asked many people for vendors (as guides) and found one nursery garden and one road side stall. The former had not made a sale in a year (and this showed, stocked with sad thin yellow things) whilst the roadside stall was abandoned, fully stocked. Nobody had even bothered to steal the plants on view. These were less than spectacular Otochilus, Bulbophyllum and Trichotosia, to be sure, but also several hundred Paphiopedilums (P. glaucophyllum-like, but not flowering, P. barbata) Phaius sp. and so on. Local tourists prefer a zinnia in a pot, or a Euphorbia. Good. My most interesting find was, I suppose, an ancient Vanda sumatrana doing what comes naturally to it on a lava cliff, entwined with an equally huge Thrixspermum sp. In general, this is a fascinating area, not least as the local people, predominantly Karo Batak, are animist-Christians. The saddle-roofed villages have as many churches as houses, and twice as many garish concrete monuments to the spirits of the dead, who live in the soil. All of this lapped by a sea of Islamic proselytisation, and ringed around the vast caldera-lake of Toba, the explosion of which 65,000 years ago almost certainly propelled humanity out of Africa. Different. ______________________________ Oliver Sparrow +44 (0)20 7736 9716 www.chforum.org _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
