How I Got Involved with ECO-SEA

2006-07-19T17:32:00.000+07:00

Back in 2000, I came across ECO-SEA's Website. ECO-SEA (Ethnobotanical Conservation Organization for South-East Asia) is part of a worldwide community of students, scholars, agencies and communities who study and conserve ethnobotanical knowledge and practices.

When I visited the Website, I was interested in their ethnobotanical interpretive materials which are available (at cost) for K-12 instructors who teach in English or Bahasa Indonesia. They have provided some excerpts from those interpretive materials on their site as "Plant Profiles". The documentation covered the botany, ecology, horticulture and ethnobotany (ceremonial, social, household and medicinal uses) of plant species native to Southeast Asia. I contacted Jeanine Pfeiffer (the Director), and soon we agreed to perform a colaborative effort in which I was responsible for translating ethnobotanical educational materials for ECO-SEA into Bahasa Indonesia.

If you are interested to obtain these materials, both in English or Indonesian version, please send your inquiry to Mrs. Jeanine Pfeiffer (director@ecosea.org)

Welcome to Herbatrop

2006-07-18T15:59:00.000+07:00

Herbatrop is "everything about plants". It is intended to accomodate thoughts, ideas, tips and anything I can write on ethnobotanical uses of plants (medicinal, culinary, recreational, ceremonial etc). I want to make them accessible to other people. By sharing my enthusiasm here, hopefully I can get to know more likeminded people and I sure hope that my two cent will be useful to others. Comments are always welcome!

I live in Bandung, Indonesia and I have been collecting plants since 1998. It all started when I received an email message from a mailing list. The message was about the hottest chile pepper in the world, which is the habanero (ha-ba-nye-ro) chile. The Red Savina™ is a cultivar of the habanero pepper, and has been tested and certified as the "World's hottest spice" as listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

From that point on, I found myself learning and growing many other types of ethnobotanical plants at home, buying and swapping plant seeds and cuttings from local nurseries and from overseas, being a member of several discussion forums etc.

Currently I am running my own land in Soreang, about 20 km South of Bandung. It's about one-third of Hectare, located in the middle of a peaceful Sundanese village, around 750 m above sea level.