gifts of Mother Nature
pp. 51-52 · Read in the full issue
How the New Guinean has used the gifts of Mother Nature
Books
New Guinea Vegetation is an unassuming but significant and stimulating book. Under the editor ship of K. Paijmans, the information provided by 25 years of Resources Reconnaissance Surveys in Papua New Guinea by CSIRO has been as sembled.
M. M. J. van Balgooy. a plant geographer from the Rijksher barium. Leiden (one of the great plant institutions of the world), dis cusses the origin and distribution of the flora and J. M. Powell (formerly of the Australian National Universi ty's New Guinea Research Unit) de scribes the role of the vegetation in the life of the New Guinea people.
This book should be read by all con cerned with the land and people of New Guinea. It incorporates much of our present day botanical knowledge of this tropical island which has environments ranging from coastal swamps to snowcapped mountains.
The writers have obviously avoid ed the unnecessary use of technical terms, but some knowledge of what botany is about is needed to get a full measure of value from the book.
The general reader must not be dis couraged by the technical terms, many of which are defined, or the botanical names of plants, for there is much fascinating information here. The publishers. CSIRO and the Australian National University Press, have produced a book of most pleasing format, and the compres sion of so much information into a work of modest size is quite an achievement.
In the first section. M. M. J. van Balgooy introduces the reader to the flora of New Guinea. How did it arise? Why is it so different from those of its very near neighbours Malaysia and Australia?
New Guinea has no endemic plant families but the large number of en demic genera and species indicate that evolution has been occurring rapidly and in isolation. It has been estimated that, of the 9 000 flower
ing-plant species of the region. 90% are endemic, so that plant genera in stead of species must be used to relate the flora to floras outside the island. A great deal of knowledge is assembled here, all well-docu mented and providing a splendid starting point for future study and speculation.
Speculation about the history of land-surfaces has been influenced by our increased knowledge of the movement of large land-masses over the surface of the globe. Who could fail to be excited by the thought that the mountains of New Guinea were formed by the collision of the Asian and Australian plates, or that an anti-clockwise rotation of New Guinea separated it from Queens land, giving it its present shape and
position?
In the second part of the book. K.
Paijmans. a plant ecologist with CSiRO, gives an account of the main vegetation-types of the island as they were observed by ecologists over the years the surveys were con ducted in Papua New Guinea. A sec tion on Irian Jaya is also included.
Over 50 plant communities, in seven major environments, are de scribed. from beach-ridges and flats at sea-level to the upper montane zone reaching over 4 000 m. Paij mans gives an account of nature, not static but changing with the seasons, the vicissitudes of earthquake, storm and volcanic action, and most of all with the violence of man and his fires. In some cases warning is given to future planners of areas vulnera ble to inappropriate use.
This section has a number of striking photographs which are very pertinent and well-placed and should help readers new to plant ecology to identify each community.
An interesting re-construction of the vegetation changes over the last 30 000 years, based on studies of pollen in the bogs of the Highlands, shows that not only was the vegeta tion pattern influenced by the wax ing and waning of ice on the high mountains but also by man who over 5 000 years ago was altering the landscape by destroying the natural forests for agricultural purposes.
In the third section of this book. J.
Powell describes, with considerable detail, the uses to which New Guinea people have put their rich flora and the many introduced spe cies, including most of the staples, which have reached their shores from elsewhere.
She deals with the staple and mostly very starchy crops (yams, sweet potatoes, taro, sago and bananas) and with a range of some 250 supplementary foods which sup ply the normal, low calorie, but ap parently nutritionally adequate.
New Guinean diet.
Methods of cultivation, prepara
tion and cooking the main foods are included, with details of the condi ments used and methods of obtain ing plant ash as a salt substitute.
A remarkable amount of informa tion is given about all the other uses for plants, as narcotics and intoxi cants, for medicine, ritual and magic (even for toothache), for tools, weapons, canoes, houses, utensils and textiles in fact all the uses a population largely involved in subsistence agriculture has for its crops and the surrounding natural vegetation. Most of this is tabulated for easy reference, and much of it given greater exposition in an infor mative text. In all. some 1 035 plant species have been recorded as hav ing a use to the New Guinea people.
Such a prodigious variety of plant usage by a people must be unique.
This section ends with a historical survey. It suggests that man landed on the coastal strand some 50 000 years ago. By 1 1 000 years ago he had reached the Highlands, and by 9 000 years ago. with a substantial reduction in the number of the large marsupials, man became more de pendent on the plants which he was perhaps already tending. The first ot the introduced staple crops, taro, was being tended more than 4 500 years ago. and the last, the sweet potato, was in cultivation in New Guinea centuries before Columbus introduced it in Europe.
Paijmans says of New Guinea: “Our knowledge of its flora is still incomplete and patchy: in some areas it is known reasonably well, but in other areas, which remain unexplored the flora has yet to be investigated. Consequently there is much scope for further study. The vegetation of New Guinea is relatively unspoilt in comparison with many other tropical areas and many natural habitats can still be preserved, a challenging task for a newly independent country.”
This book is very well indexed and its facts well supported by references to published literature.
The comprehensive and up-to-date (1975) bibliography is a valuable reference work in its own right, drawing together the relevant literature not only of botany but of a
number of other disciplines.
Thompson
Joy
NEW GUINEA VEGETATION. Edited by K. Paijmen*.
Published by the CSIRO in association with the Australian National University Press, Canberra. $16.95)