Merkus pine (Pinus merkusii)

Tusam or gondorukem or Sumatran pine or Merkus pine (Pinus merkusii) is a species in Pinaceae, 25-45 meters high and 1 meter in diameter. Orange-red-brown bark, thick, cracked at the base of the stem, thin and scaly in the upper crown.

P. merkusii is endemic to Sumatra and the only natural distribution of members of Pinaceae in the southern part of the Equator. Most grow at an altitude of 400-1,500 meters, but sometimes at 90 meters and 2,000 meters. This tree generally covers the entire canopy in a large area.

The leaves are needle-shaped and paired, 15-20 cm long, less than 1 mm thick and green or yellowish in color. Woody cones have a length of 5-8 cm and a width of 2 cm at the base when closed, green but with aging will turn red-brown shiny.

Cones will open to 4-5 cm wide at maturity to release seeds in all directions. The seeds have 5-6 mm length and 15-20 mm wings to fly riding the wind. Tusam has separate male and female genital organs but in one individual.

Sumatran pine naturally dominates mountain tropical forests in Indonesia, but is widely cultivated in a number of places in Java and Sumatra to harvest sap on the stem as a raw material for turpentine and gondorukem or resina colophonium.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Class: Pinopsida
Order: Pinales
Family: Pinaceae
Genus: Pinus
Subgenus: Pinus
Section: Pinus
Species: Pinus merkusii

Thomas Sutikna lives with Homo floresiensis

BLOG - On October 28, 2004, a paper was published in Nature describing the dwarf hominin we know today as Homo floresiensis that has shocked the world. The report changed the geographical landscape of early humans that previously stated that the Pleistocene Asia was only represented by two species, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens . The report titled "A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia" written by Peter Brown and Mike J. Morwood from the University of New England with Thomas Sutikna, Raden Pandji Soejono, Jatmiko, E. Wahyu Saptomo and Rokus Awe Due from the National Archaeology Research Institute (ARKENAS), Indonesia, presents more diversity in the genus Homo. “Immediately, my fever vanished. I couldn’t sleep well that night. I couldn’t wait for sunrise. In the early morning we went to the site, and when we arrived in the cave, I didn’t say a thing because both my mind and heart couldn’t handle this incredible moment. I just went down...

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