TARANAKI RHODODENDRON FESTIVAL October 30 – November 2, 2009
This
plant is a plant of my youth. When I went to live in Singapore as a
faculty wife in NTU, the Nanyang Technological University, we were very
lucky we were given residences on campus, and NTU was located on what
was once a jungle. There were still a jungle next to the campus. I has a
blast from the past when I saw some of the plants I had seen and used
when I was a child growing up in Borneo, especially with my Grand Dad in
the village.
This plant is called by the white man as
the Singapore Rhododendron. I LOL to myself. In the mid 1950s, Dad had a
scholarship to study in London, Mum took us from Sibu town to live in
the village at Lanang Road. There were no dairies, 7/11 convenient shop,
and no hawker to sell us tit bits. We made our own tit bits from
raiding Grand Dad's pineapple garden to dipping in his soya bean paste
while it was being made.
As for this Singapore
Rhododendron, my older siblings found that the black fruits of the
Rhododendron was sweet. It had a funny gluey sweetness. You won't eat it
today, but then, we didn't have much choice. We also peeled off the
bark of the tiny twigs and ate them. The taste was a little sour. Mum
didn't have to be Agatha Christie to find out we ate the fruit. You see,
the dark fruits stained our lips and teeth. She would scream," You
native kids, what if you kids died from the poisonous herbs? How am I
going to explain to your Dad in London?"
If you read
http://sarawakianaii.blogspot.com/2009/11/come-see-my-black-teeth.htmlpost, you will learn that it is a medicinal plant.
http://flowersfromtoday.blogspot.co.nz/
http://floralfridayfoto.blogspot.co.nz/
At skin so tough have to use a woodenmallet to gently tap to cut through.
Cucurbita ficifolia, also known as the seven year melon, is a type of squash ... shark fin melon (in Asia), written as 鱼翅瓜 in Mandarin; black seeded melon ...
