ABSTRACT
As one floats down a river in the tropics, the diversity of plant and animal life assaults the senses. On the island of Borneo, in Indonesia, for instance, one encounters upland rice fields, which show up as cleared patches dotting the hillsides; in one field, a lone woman bends low to weed. There may be small patches of paddy rice along the river’s edge. The forest itself is often a patchwork of varying stages of regrowth – new fallows thick with weeds, medicinal plants and perennial crops planted with upland rice the previous year, older fallows replete with fruit trees and various edible leaves, palm hearts and tubers, and still older fallows full of timber and fibres. Other patches are covered in old-growth forest, known for its lush foliage and abundant wildlife. From time to time one spots an orchard, but not a tidy, western-style orchard with its cleared underbrush and straight lines. What emerges is a chaotic profusion of greenery, identifiable as an orchard only by the comparative abundance of rubber or durian (Durio spp.) or duku (Lansium domesticum) trees.
