Sesame (Sesamum orientale)

A number of friends would know that, for many years, I'd had an intense pining for a linga or sesame plant. This was the only plant I lacked to complete the backyard diversity song for gardening, the "Bahay Kubo" (that version sounds like prepubescent zombies singing).

Sesame has a special place in my heart, not only because it is delicious and the source of hummus' tahini, but because it marked my interest in ethnobotany, plant history, etc. Like many of my most favored plants, everyone uses it, but nobody really knows how the plant looks.

Let me start by saying that sesame flowers resemble beautiful people's noses. At least, that's what ancient Indian texts referring to dieties say. Some moving verses like:

His beautiful eyes are just like reddish lotus flowers. They are most beautiful, just like lakes of Krishna Prema. His nose is arched and is resplendent just like the sesame flower. (Referring to Sri Chaitanya)



Whose nose, that is beautiful as a sesame flower, is adorned with a round pearl. (Referring to Radha, the female pictured above)

Hindu references to gods with noses like sesame flowers (tilottama) spread out further into South India. Investigation into these phenomena reveals that in South India, the Vijayanagara Empire began to exhibit preferences of sharp noses, with metaphors abounding refering to ellu poo or the sesame flower. (In contrast, the preceding empire favored round, wide noses, with their flower of favorable nasal comparison being that of the kumizhi, bloom of the Gmelina asiatica). Honestly, the flowers look similar to me!


Sesame flower.


Gmelina asiatica flower.

And the practical, perceivable relationship that sesame has with beauty are many in a few cultures. Ayurveda recommends daily oil massages for health and beauty, and so on, and so forth.

But anyway, the plant.

The plant is amazing. Mine started out as little black seeds which I procured in an adventure to Ilocos. I almost lost them, breaking the clay pot that held them, but thankfully, I was able to take some home.



They were smaller than the typical sesame seeds, and still covered with the black layer that signals viability to plant. Jimmy mentioned he planted a whole field of them so his mom could make the molasses-sesame delicacies she sells in the market (and those were amazing as well).

They progressed to unassuming little seedlings, as I suppose everything does:



And one that I coddled in particular boletd to a potentially overpowering plant with pointed, coarse leaves. It's come to resemble a hydra, aggressive stems reaching out of the netting I wrapped around one plant box to dissuade the chickens from having a salsa party inside.



I read somewhere that the leaves could be a potherb (food), but I find them to be a tad bitter. Of course, that hasn't stopped any major culture for utilizing leaves as nourishment. The flower, that thing compared to so many divine noses, smells like tahini. This is strange, as I wondered if my acquaintance with sesame paste makes me unable to say that the flower is fragrant.





Now thse fall off and give way to pods, green and supple. Mine aren't nearly ready yet to be harvsted, as sesame has sort of a long yield period. I don't mind at all. The pods will dry out and the sesame will start rattling inside. This attribute, which makes sesame perhaps viable as a musical instrument for small mammals, has led to a string of names meaning "echo". These begin with Arabic jaljala and move on to Spanish ajonjoli, Hindi gingli (another term aside from the more common til), and Portuguese gergelim.

In the meantime, I sacrificed a few pods to examine the freakish assemblage of sesame seeds waiting to coat themselves in black.





So how did this thing end up in my garden? Apparently, it was domesticated in the Indian region several centuries BC. I guess they reached the Philippines pre-Spanish period. The predominant Malaysian and Indonesian words are bijan and wijen, respectively. I imagine one syllable bearing resemblance to another from the Hindu gingli-- though I admit it is a laughable stretch.

Old attempts to dictionarize the Malay language show the Javanese word (and current Filipino word) as linga. Thailand calls it ngaa, and Laos, man nga. I have read it written as hei chih-mah and hu ma in Chinese. I'm positing that via.

So yes, it's getting late, and like my "harvest", this is an open-ended story. I will update further on the progress and how I end up using the plant. Til then, think of the plant whenever you eat hummus or things from your local Chinese restaurant.

Achuete (Bixa orellana)

The achuete, achiote (the latter being the Nauhatl term, used in the warmer Americas) or annatto is one of my favorite plants. I say this because it is all-around an interesting specimen, with a beautiful flower, a strange-looking fruit, and some great culinary and home-dyeing applications. It is safe to say that though we encounter the seed's coloration in some of our most famous dishes (kare-kare and pansit luglug), we rarely bump into the living specimen anymore.



With soft red spines in the young pods, the fruit looks like a small, heart-shaped rambutan (which is, in fact, what most people think it is when they see it). If that couldn't be endearing enough, break it open and you will find supple, moist red seeds, just ready to be used as lipstick or writing on friends' faces. Which is what I do sometimes, without a mirror, while gardening, and have only yesterday been met with "what's that on your lip?".

The young leaves begin brown, like the mango tree, and proceed to form a fat, shiny heart shape. My tree began flowering at such a low height, it was surprising. The blooms are pretty, pinkish, with the petals curving inward. These give way to a round berry-like thing, which is the full fruit waiting to happen.



Slowly these begin to grow the little hairs or spines that the plant is famous for.





The specimen above is actually abnormal, with few hairs but actually not quite mature. It's my garden's little, less aesthetically pleasing excuse for an achuete, but inside it actually had pretty fat, supple, pulpy seeds.

When the pods dry, they open up, begging you to take custody and propagate them. Their somewhat genital appearance reinforces the fact in your mind that they are usedas a "female aphrodisiac" in the Amazon.



Aside from the myriad of medicinal uses, the achuete's obvious strength in human use is its natural, red-orange color. It is used to safely give some life to pale food products such as cheese, spreads, and oils. This is because of the high amount of carotenoids in the plant, which is said to keep people healthy.



One particular indigenous use in Ecuador is the most interesting, for me. The men from the Tsachila indigenous group form a brilliant paste of achuete and grease and apply this to their hair. As they shave the sides of their head and keep a "crown" that is strikingly colored, they look like slick, beautiful birds (see photo above, taken from here). The achuete is supposed to represent strength to them, as well . A most curious fact is that the Tsachila only began wearing their hair like this after the Spanish arrived, supposedly to protect themselves from disease brought by the conquistadores. Below is a video showing the coloration process:



I dunno about you, but this gives me ideas for Halloween costumes or boring-day activities. The possibilities are endless, but my time today is not, so I'll end this post with a photo of a coat of mine, made with pineapple leaves and local cotton, then dyed with annatto seeds:

Munggo (Vigna radiata)

The munggo (pronounced moong-goh, there you have it, I can imagine the awkward attempts at pronunciation otherwise) or mung bean is a fixture in Philippine homes. I would say this is the only bean that remains constant and year-round in the metropolitan savory diet. Wet markets are never without them. They are cheaper and more common than the yellow and red varieties, which are often used for sweets and snacks. Their starch is made into thin noodles called sotanghon. There are documented medicinal properties.

If you have gone through the Philippine school system, you had probably grown some munggo in science class, on a piece of cotton or wet paper. It germinates quickly and demonstrates to children what plants are like and such.



While the mung bean is thought to have been domesticated in India (moong is a Hindi word), where it is commonly used for dhal and other dishes, some research shows that it actually originated from West Asia, or the "Afghanistan-Iran-Iraq area". It may have reached the east via two routes-- the Silk Road (West Asia to India to China to Taiwan) or from India to Southeast Asia.

Our standard munggo stew and our porridge with glutinous rice and coconut milk (f'in yum) seem somewhat common (with variations, of course) throughout Southeast Asian dishes and snacks. The eating of sprouts, (tauge or taugeh in Indonesian and Bahasa Melayu, Hispanized spelling togue for us), seems to have arrived here through East Asia, where its use is much more prevalent.

We grew ours from some market seeds, getting a little more than a dozen green munggo plants beside the okra. These are now bearing flowers and pods. Our companion at home has been extolling the superiority of eating fresh (soft) beans in her province (Bacolod), so we have been harvesting green pods and shelling them. Fresh, soft beans are segregated from the tougher ones from the dried pods which we somehow missed harvesting. When we have enough, we will get a decent dish going. As we are a good number of people at home, this requires patience.



The pods are allowed to dry in commercial production, as it prolongs shelf life, of course, and it is easier to process then. The seeds are extracted by either beating the pods or trampling on them. Here are some dry beans:



Compare the above with the fresh seeds below, which are larger, lighter in color, and tender enough to squeeze and destroy:



Munggo is relatively easy to grow in non-clay soils. The soil needs to be well-drained. They tolerate some amount of drought. A bonus are the little yellow flowers which come in bunches.

Caballero (Caesalpinia pulcherrima)

Finally, a caballero tree has graced us with its presence! A pink one, too. Though it is a very easy tree to grow, I've not been successful at all these past years. I scored some seeds from a plant in Bacolod (3 years ago!). Months back, I broadcasted a bunch of old mixed seeds by the entrance to the front lot, and this just popped up afterwards.


I very much love the color of the blooms, which are darker than the pinks I see. Pink itself is not very common among caballeros, they are usually red-orange and/or yellow. This is what I observe around, and an image search confirms that this is probably true for the rest of the world:


I am unable to figure out why the plant is called caballero, Spanish for "horse-rider", some kind of knight or anything similarly gentlemanly. It has no indigenous names (aside from bulaklak ng paraiso or "flower of paradise", which still uses a Spanish word) tells us it arrived on our shores after we were colonized.

Barbados has a cute little rendering of it on their Queen's flag. It is considered to be an introduced (sometimes invasive) species everywhere except in the West Indies. However, a Harvard professor wonders in a very interesting article if it was brought there by African slaves.

The plant is a beautiful way to get nitrogen into the ground. It's probably been around long enough in the country to have the corresponding native nitrogen-fixing bacteria readily available in the soil. The leaves are also small and decompose fast, and the seeds are popped out of the pod. Branches grow quickly after cutting and using for mulch, and the tree does not grow very tall either-- usually just above a one-story home.

There are thorns on the trunk and branches, though, and the roots are poisonous. I interpret these as signals that it is indeed a pioneer tree, ready to act on poor soil and keep botherers like people out while it regenerates! At the same time, it attracts butterflies, which are its main pollinators.



The whole plant has a long history of medicinal use in other countries, but in the Philippines only one area has been reported to use them (in La Union, where a decoction of its parts is used for a laxative or to stimulate menstruation). This is perhaps evidence of its fairly recent introduction, because usually Pinoys are all over a plant for folk uses.

The bark is used as to make a healing and disinfecting mouthwash. The plant parts are used in a similar way as they do in La Union, and also to abort babes.

Lubi-lubi (Ficus pseudopalma)

This plant looks like a palm but is actually part of the ficus or fig family, only with no branches and with saw-like long leaves. Inside, the "fruit" is actually lined with little flowers, which hold in them the seeds. It snaps easily and is good for mulching. You can use it to wrap food, as well.

Grown in metropolitan areas as an ornamental, the young leaves of the Philippine fig (as it is known in other countries) can actually be cooked in coconut milk, sometimes with meat or fish, especially in Bicol. The Department of Science and Technology found this to be one of the most promising wild endemic edibles in the country.



The Bicolano name is lubi-lubi, while Tagalog is niyog-niyogan. Lubi means coconut in Bicol, while niyog means the same in Tagalog. This is probably because the plant looks like a small and comical coconut tree, with its trunk likewise taking shape with indentations left by fallen leaves and fruit. In any case, both names are shared with other, completely unrelated species of plants, so be careful when researching!



Aside from being eaten, the small tree is also used in folk medicine. A decoction of the leaves is useful for diabetes and kidney-related ailments.

I spotted it while walking around and took some young leaves to cook and some fruit to plant. While it is widespread, the lubi-lubi is categorized by conservation experts as a vulnerable species.

Sulasi / Holy Basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum)

Holy basil is hot. I discovered, while munching on random garden leaves, that savoring its clovey flavor should be limited to brief periods. It literally burns the tongue! However, it cuts wonderfully through the thickness of sweet and creamy desserts, growing it for this alone is recommended.

Taking its English name from its important connection with religious practice in the Indian subcontinent, tulsi (Hindu name) means "the incomparable one". Sprigs of it were sometimes placed on the chest of a resting person to protect him. People chew its leaves before religious ceremonies, and households often grow them and even adorn them.



Migrating towards Southeast Asia, it picked up variations on its name such as sulasi (Philippines, Malaysia) and selaseh (Indonesia, Malaysia). Eastern Philippines calls it kamangi or kamangkau, related to Indonesia's selseh kemangi. Eastern and Tagalog Philippines also calls it loko-loko and koloko-loko, similar to Malay ruku-ruku.



As you can see above, the plant is pretty hairy. Its leaves are toothed. The flowers appear in smaller, neater rows than most basil varieties. Vigorous self-seeders like basil, I find, are really useful in restoring a barren area that you don't quite have enough time yet to attend to. There have been times when a "mini-basil forest" simply pops up somewhere, really bushy thriving, protecting the soil from drying out, attracting butterflies, and decomposing into the soil. They are wonderful to walk through.



There is a dark purple sort of holy basil that I tried to propagate many years ago, but that went to shits. This one grew out of some seeds from India.

Holy basil is one of those that treat an amazingly broad range of imbalances. Even my dog knows it (see him munching on the leaves in the topmost photo).

Folk uses in the Philippines include boiling the leaves for aromatic baths, or for remedies against gonorrhea. A preparation from the seeds (which form a jelly when soaked) is said to soothe inflamed throats. Other countries use the plant as an infusion for stomach and liver problems. The juice from leaves can be used to treat earaches. It is also used to increase milk for breastfeeding.

Modern research shows that the plant actually helps people deal with stress. It reduces the production of stress hormones, apparently allowing people to approach 21st century frustration with more clarity. It also packs significant anti-oxidant properties.

Sampa-sampalukan (Phyllanthus niruri)

If you have liver issues, or just want to keep your debauchery in check, I suggest you go through your neighborhood wasteland and pick up a couple of whole sampa-sampalukan plants.

Called such because it resembles a young sampalok or tamarind tree, this plant is excellent for liver and kidney ailments. I can attest to its effectiveness in de-gunking the liver. It doesn't taste pleasant-- the bitterness can be a little too much for me. A decoction of the whole plant works for fevers as well. In some cases, it is used for malaria.



Perhaps the most delightful thing about sampa-sampalukan is the location of its seeds, which can be found when you turn the plant upside-down. They are little balls that go down between the leaves:



Some people say the plant originated in India, where it has been reported during the 1700s. Some claim it originated from the Philippines. Others posit that it arrived here via the Americas. In any case, these are the places where the it is frequently used, primarily for medicinal purposes.

All across the Philippines it is called various things: kurukalunggai, sususampalok, talikod in Bicolano, taltalikod in Ilokano, malakirum-kirum in Visayan, ngingihel in Ifugao, and San Pedro in some parts of the Visayas, obviously post-Hispanic. The names with talikod in them probably refer to the fact that you have to turn the leaf around to see the seeds.

In Peru it is known as chanca piedra, giving the imagery of breaking or crushing stones. In fact, this is what it does to deposits in the kidney and liver, making it a cheap and effective alternative to surgery. Brazil has quebra piedra, meaning essentially the same thing.

In Indian ayurveda, it is called bhumi amalki and administered as a laxative and an intestinal anaesthetic. Some parts of the subcontinent use it mostly for reproductive and genital disordersl like syphilis and gonorrhea.

It can be made into eyedrops. Caution must be exercised with large and concentrated doses, however-- the plant can also be used to poison fish!

Bangkoro (Morinda citrifolia)

Two bangkoro-related memories from the 90s:

1. Seeing bottles of the expensive "miracle" fermented Tahitian Noni Juice during the Noni craze. Drinking it, thinking it tasted like a pretty bad sweetened thing, generally finding it exotic.

2. Seeing a curious fruit along the rocky Batangas coast. Climbing up the tree, jumping to get it. Trying to bite into it (too hard), chucking it in bag, forgetting about it. Regretting it-- it was completely mushy and smelled like rotten cheese. (See a similar specimen below.)



Also known as Indian mulberry, in Sanskrit it is called achuka, which means long life. We Southeast Asians seem to have passed the tree around-- here the bangkoro is also called bangkudo and bangkuru. In Malaysia, it is called bengkudu, while in Indonesia, mengkudu. The Ilokanos call it apatot, which in my view sounds like a word that could mean "smelly". In Sur, there is a town and beach named after the tree.

It is present in many tropical coasts and secondary forests. I have to say that from my perspective, this fruit has tried to avoid human food consumption by fooling us into thinking it goes straight from unripe to rotten. But in fact, the fruit is perfectly ripe when it starts to smell like some form of cheese gone bad, and the skin is soft and looking like a yellow blister that is ready to pop. Below are some unripe ones:



Believed to have been brought by Southern Indians to the Pacific Islands (have you seen how some Southern Indians look Polynesian?) about 1,500 years ago, the plant is now a superstar in the supplement subculture, having what seems to me to be endless medicinal applications.

The more interesting and less known of them:

• If your gums are rotting, char the fruit in fire, mix with sea salt, rub on problem area.
• Take the mush from the ripe fruit and put it over a boil to extract the pus head.
• If you have a wound or ulcer, rub some fresh leaves to slightly call forth their juice, and plaster it on the area.
• For congestion, fever, nausea, the leaves can be heated and applied to the chest area.
• If you don't get your menstrual period (and are female), a decoction of the leaves can help.
• If you still have some leftover from above, use it as a sore-throat gargle.
  
• Painful first aid! For deep cuts or broken bones (particularly those sticking out of your skin), pound a bunch of leaves with salt and apply.

The bark is used to make a red or purple dye, and the roots yield one that ranges from yellow to brown. Variations, I suppose, depend on your mordants. When you're using the roots, be sure to go for the thinner ones-- beyond half an inch yields almost no dye.

During famines, people have been driven to eat the fruits (unripe and bitter or ripe and presumably with cotton up their noses). Burmese sometimes include them (unripe) in curries, and aborigines eat it raw with salt. At all times, the young leaves can be eaten as vegetables.

Pick one and you'll find that it's actually an aggregated fruit-- many in one! Recently I was able to spot one while biking around. If you want to be sure the seeds are mature enough for you, search for ripe fruits, or those that have already dried out. I recommend wrapping them in some kind of large leaf to save you the hassle of cleaning up, as they are mushy. You're lucky if you get some that are dried out enough to not be messy about.



Plant the seeds and put the tree in full sun. From observation, they prefer lowlands and can thrive in sandy or rocky soil.

Plants for Oakley's Cataract

My dog Oakley (above, in the garden) is an asong kalye. This literally means he's a "street dog", but it really just says he's a mongrel.

He's a mongrel, so he doesn't get sick as often as purebreeds. Recently though, he's developed cataracts in both his eyes! He's only 5 years old, so it's a bit alarming, but...

Gatas-gatas is a weed that has some milky white sap that comes out when you break the stems (gatas is milk in Tagalog, actually). This sap is good for cataract and eye problems. We have lots of it in the garden, so I took some and washed a lot of the plant matter in alkaline water and extracted the sap into a solution of Panlapu. Panlapu is a herbal preparation made with mayana or coleus and water. It's something of a preventive eye health thing and is hard to find. Some old man makes it, I bought it at an organic market once.



Since we've been putting drops in his eyes, his cataract isn't getting worse, and the black is sort of coming back. Hopefully we can fix the problem without giving him chemical meds.

Bitaog (Calophyllum blancoi)

I smelled sweet flowers on a Puerto Princesa shore. Searching for the source didn't take me far, as I reached a beautiful large tree with white flowers and leathery leaves. The next thing to search for was a nearby native who could tell me what it was.

Apparently, the tree is called dangkalan locally, but in Tagalog is called bitaog. More research led to a discovery that this highly medicinal plant is found in many other parts of the world, mostly along coasts and lowland forests, but occasionally at higher elevations.

Obviously, it somehow traveled to/from us via the Indo-Malay peninsula, where it is called bintangor (in Bicol and in some parts of the Visayan and Tagalog regions, it is called bitangol). The Ilocano and Pangasinense areas call it many names from the same family (pameklatan, pamitlain, pamitaogen, pamitauyen).

Some people call it palo maria or santa maria, from its "whole name" in Spanish of palo de santa maria. The conquistadores seem to have applied the same name to the guanandi of South America, which is actually the related Callophyllum blancoi.

Bitaog, which has recently received marginal attention due to it being able to produce more oil than jatropha, is a highly medicinal tree. The oil is used for skin disorders and the sap used for external application against asthma. Unfortunately, the seed was not available for me to take home.



The man told me that the leaves are also boiled or pounded with water, and this resulting solution applied to sore eyes or eye infections. You can also choose to relax your eyes against the bark of the tree, like this guy:

Ampalayang Ligaw (Momordica charantia)

Look at this cute thing. I've been finding it all over the garden recently. When I first saw the familiar leaves, I decided they were too small to belong to ampalaya. Upon fruiting, we decided they were undoubtedly related to the ones we regularly eat, only they are really small. Ampalayang ligaw or wild ampalaya becomes a gorgeous orange when ripe. It contains bright red seeds, as shown in this photo.

Apparently, its leaves are preferred over the cultivated variety. I'm sure it contains just the same (if not more) medicinal qualities! And... it's just so damn cute. It's just like having tiny pea-sized watermelons or jackfruit.

I'm having this for dinner tonight!