John Boyd Macdonald
John Boyd Macdonald
The Mahakam River runs right across the province of Kalimantan Timur, from the Muller Mountains of Central Borneo to the east coast, downstream of Samarinda. At 980km, it’s the second longest river in Indonesia (after the Kapuas in Kalimantan Barat).…
Two of the large and rather imposing trees in the Tane’ Olen forest upriver of Setulang, North Kalimantan, Indonesia. One (and possibly both) of them is a Yellow Meranti (Shorea faguetiana). They grow TALL – the biggest recorded one is…
There are about 15,000 species of flowering plants on the island of Borneo, around 5,000 of which are endemic (i.e. they aren’t found anywhere else in the world). And amongst that number are known to be at least 1,700 varieties of…
If you take a short cut through the forest, it’s only about 500 metres’ walk from the Visitor Centre at the Kebun Raya Balikpapan to the Orchid House (Rumah Anggrek). But this morning it took me nearly an hour. There…
I spend a lot of time at the Kebun Raya Balikpapan looking upwards, craning my neck to see birds, monkeys, fruit, flowers and treetops in the forest canopy. But the ground below is sometimes uneven, and very often slippery, so…
‘Hylobates muelleri‘ is known in English as ‘Mueller’s Bornean Gibbon’. But I much prefer the Indonesian name ‘Owa wa‘, which is a near-exact transcription of this gibbon’s distinctive call. This primate is endemic to the island of Borneo. It’s classed…
The Lutung Merah (Presbytis rubicunda) is variously known in English as the maroon langur, maroon leaf monkey, or red leaf monkey. It’s unique to Borneo and the neighbouring little island of Karimata. They eat leaves, fruit and seeds. Their bodies…
Thecostele alata, a lovely terrestrial orchid which can be found from Northeastern India across to The Philippines, including East Kalimantan, where this one was collected for the Koleksi Anggrek (Orchid Collection) at the Kebun Raya Balikpapan (Balikpapan Botanical Garden). I…