English plum (Spondias dulcis)

Kedongdong or English plum (Spondias dulcis) is a species in the Anacardiaceae, a tree 20 meters tall, erect stem with many branches, bark whitish brown or reddish, fruit eaten fresh or processed into a variety of dishes.

S. dulcis has pinnate leaves, 20-60 cm long, consisting of 9-25 leaflets, green and glossy, elliptical or obovate-oblong and 9-10 cm long. Flowers are white and small in terminal panicles.

Fruit oblong, 6-9 cm long, in bunches with 12 or more items on long stalks. The fruit falls to the ground while still green and firm, then turns golden yellow when ripe.

Young leaves are used as a spice for Pepes. The more ripe leaves are eaten as salad greens despite the sour taste. The fruit can be eaten raw with shrimp paste, thick, black, salty-sweet sauce. Often also used as juice.

Kingdom: Plantae
Phylum: Tracheophyta
Subphylum: Angiospermae
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Sapindales
Family: Anacardiaceae
Subfamily: Spondiadoideae
Genus: Spondias
Species: Spondias dulcis

Cogon grass (Imperata cylindrica)

Alang-alang or cogon grass ( Imperata cylindrica ) is a plant species in Poaceae, annual grass, sharp leaf, long buds and scaly, creeping under the ground, very adaptive and grows in all climates which often become weeds on agricultural land. I. cylindrica has a sharp pointed tip of the bud and emerges from the ground, height of 0.2-1.5 m but in other places it may be more, short stems, rising up to the ground and flowering white or purplish, often with wreath of hair under the segment. Leaf strands in the form of long ribbons, lancet-tipped with a narrow base and gutter-shaped, 12-80 cm long, very coarse edge and jagged sharply, long hair at the base with broad, pale leaf bones in the middle. The flowers are panicles, 6-28 cm long with long-haired and white-colored ears for 1 cm which are used as a tool to blow off the fruit when ripe. Cogon grass breeds quickly with seeds that spread quickly with the wind or through rhizomes that quickly penetrate the soil. Alang-alang does...

Ralph Holzenthal caddisfly (Rhyacophila lignumvallis) from Corsica in Rhyacophila tristis (Schmid 1970) group

NEWS - Ralph Holzenthal caddisfly ( Rhyacophila lignumvallis Graf & Rázuri-Gonzales, sp. nov.) from the island of Corsica (France) was established as a new species in the Rhyacophila tristis (Schmid 1970) group based on morphological analysis and the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (mtCOI), including sequences from 16 of the 28 species in the group. Rhyacophila Pictet 1834 with 814 living and 30 fossil species is the largest genus of caddisflies in the world, distributed mainly in the northern hemisphere, but also in temperate and tropical India and Southeast Asia. One of the groups is the R. tristis group in the branch Rhyacophila invaria . R. lignumvallis is most similar to Rhyacophila pubescens Pictet 1834, Rhyacophila tsurakiana Malicky 1984, Rhyacophila ligurica Oláh & Vinçon 2021, Rhyacophila harmasa Oláh & Vinçon 2021 and Rhyacophila abruzzica Oláh & Vinçon 2021. However, R. lignumvallis differs in the shape of the X tergum, the dorsal arm ...

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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