Recent project: Gingers on Tropical Islands
In January 2007, I completed my participation in the scientific expedition Galathea 3 in which I was studying wild gingers on a total of 10 islands in the Solomons and in Papua New Guinea from 18 Nov 2006 - 26 Jan 2007. With my local counterparts we made about 130 collections.
Read more on Galathea 3's website in English or Danish.
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Papua New Guinea
From 18 December 2006 to 26 January 2007, I carried out fieldwork in Papua New Guinea with my local counterpart Billy Bau as part of the Galathea 3 Expedition. We started the ginger search in the mountains above Bulolo in Morobe Province on the mainland of New Guinea, where we found several interesting species including some new Etlingera.
On the first day of Christmas we continued to the Admiralty Islands (Manus Province) and visited the islands of Manus, Rambutyo and Buke. On the latter island, we celebrated New Year's Eve with other participants in Galathea 3 from Moesgaard Museum, Denmark (read my weblog on Jyllandsposten's Galathea website in Danish).
We returned to the mainland on 3 January 2007 and then spent a few days in Eastern Highlands, one week in West New Britain and one week in Bougainville surveying the forests for gingers. We have made 80 collections of which several represent new species to Science. But it is of equal importance that the collections serve to provide a much deeper understanding of existing species names and their distribution, local names and uses in the region. |
Axel and his merry boat men from Rambutyo on the way to the next destination. |
Billy Bau and Axel at one of the undescribed species that we collected from the highlands of PNG.
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Billy Bau, botanist from Papua New Guinea Forest Research Institute in Lae, in the process of excavating the subterranean fruits of a new species of Etlingera from the mountainous Bulolo area. |
A species of ginger (Etlingera), which may resemble a red pine apple half buried in the ground.
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In the banana boat on the way to next target island. |
On look out for a school of skip jacks (tunas) to supplement the evening meal. |
Sometimes a shower at sea was a pleasant cooler in the open banana boat. |
Axel measuring a large wild ginger (Hornstedtia scottiana).
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Documentation including photography of the flowers is essential for identification of the ginger species. |
The leafy shoot of Alpinia oceanica is used by the locals when climbing palms for betel or coconuts.
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Alpinia oceanica is one of the most common wild ginger species on the outer islands in PNG. |
A species of Etlingera from Bougainville Island collected on 21 Jan 2007
Activities in Solomon Islands, Kolombangara Island |
The search for gingers on Kolombangara Island,
Solomon Islands, was completed on 10 Dec 2006.
Kolombangara is of volcanic origin and reaches
1770 m. |
From Gizo we organized a 'banana boat' to take us to Kolombangara Island. Gizo is a cozy harbour town where The Galathea 3 Expedition Vessel, Vædderen, arrived on 29 Dec 2006. |
The boat trip to Kolombangara at sunset took 2 hours as we had to go to the northern side. |
At 1200 m, we found the biggest ginger I have ever seen. Alpinia novae-hiberniae. |
Alpinia pulchra – a ginger from Kolombangara with red fruits. They go black when ripe. |
The leaf of the big Alpinia novae-hiberniae can be up to 1.75 m long. |
Axel's counterpart, Fred Pitisopa, holding a young inflorescence of Alpinia novae-hiberniae. |
Our camp at 1200 m. |
At Nusatupe Airport (near Gizo), we showed a lady and her four grandchildren from Choiseul pictures of gingers. They recognized most of them and could inform us of their local names. The lady also new 4 species of gingers in Choiseul Island that we had not yet seen. |
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Back in Honiara, we constructed a device to dry our bulky collections. Our collections have now been posted back to Europe. |
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The wild ginger, Alpinia purpurata, is
common in all three islands so far visited in the
Solomons.
Makira Island
The search for gingers on Makira, Solomon
Islands, took place 26 Nov – 3 Dec 2006. After being
dropped by helicopter near the highest point of
the island on 28 Nov, my local counterpart, Fred
Pitisopa, and I surveyed the central highlands
for a few days. After that we walked for two days
to reach Kirakira at the coast spending the night
in a local village on the way.
In total, we have documented 10 species of
gingers on both Makira and Kolombangara Islands.
All but one has local names and uses and two of
them are tabooed. We still managed to collect all
without getting into trouble. I still need to
consult the literature and type material to
establish if any of my collections represent new
species. Most of them are at least new to Makira
and me. |
