About Maluku: Flora and fauna

G.E Rumphius

Born in 1627, in Wolfersheim, Germany, G. E. Rumphius was fascinated by botany at an early age. His military duty for the VOC (Dutch East India Company) brought him to Batavia (Jakarta) at the age of 25. One year later he arrived in Ambon, where he would settle for life. He conducted research in Hila village, lived next to fort Amsterdam, and composed, among other works, Ambonische Kruidboek, "The Flora of Amboina".

Rumphius was keen to discover new plant species and conducted extensive systematical research on their uses. Beside fauna and flora, Rumphius also wrote about the history of Maluku. In 1670, he was struck blind by glaucoma, but even this would not halt his seminal work in documenting Maluku biology.

Rumphius passed away on June 15, 1702. He is buried at his house yard.

A monument was erected on the corner of jalan Pattimura, Ambon island, to commemorate his great work.

Clove

Cloves (Eugenia aromatica), now common throughout the world's supermarkets, were once found only on select Maluku isles. The warm, sweet scent of these dried flower buds, and their power to preserve and revive stored meat in the days before refrigeration, inspired thousands of Chinese, Arabian and European sailors to undertake perilous voyages. Many of these voyages, including Magellan's first global circumnavigation, spawned additional important discoveries.

Cloves are important not only as food flavorings. To the present day, clove oil is distilled and used as medicine for toothaches and stomach ailments. Cloves are also blended with tobacco to create the distinctively sweet Indonesian kretek cigarettes.

What could be more refreshing on your stroll through the Maluku rainforest than to crush a handful a fresh clove leaves and take in their warm, zesty aroma?

Nutmeg

Like cloves, nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) is a spice of great worldwide demand native only to Maluku. Banda Island, with its rich, volcanic soils carpeted in nutmeg trees, was once a near-fabled destination for daring merchant sailors. Oddly, local harvesters first found little use for this crop, and were often quite puzzled by what all the fuss was about.

Surrounding the nutmeg "nut" or seed, the red, waxy aril, known as mace, is actually more potent and valuable than nutmeg itself.

The nutmeg tree, a sun-sensitive tree not unlike coffee, is often grown under the cover of kenari trees. The delicate nuts of kenari are now exported as another sustainably harvested forest crop from many parts of Maluku.

Orchid

Beautiful wild orchids are found throughout Maluku. The famous natural historian G.E. Rumphius (1627-1702), identified 170 orchid species in the Maluku Islands and surrounding areas.

Phalaenopsis amboinensis, a tiny yellow-green moon orchid with brown spots, is the most world-famous species, native to the Kawa valley, Seram island. Rumphius sent this species to Europe where it was then crossed with other species. Today many award-winning Phalaenopsis cultivars are descendants of this Ambon species.

Another prized Maluku orchid is Dendrobium phalaenopsis, known locally as bunga larat. D. phalaenopsis varies from clear white to grape purple, with nuances between these two colors.

In addition, Maluku also boasts Bulophilium orchids, Coloagyne, Vanda celebia, Dendrobium grananatum vandopsis (tiger orchid) and Phaius spp. (the common garden orchid).

Sago

As a main food of Maluku, the sago palm (Metroxylon sp) is grown in several locations in Maluku. Years ago, sago was so valuable due to storable within unlimited of time, as well as transportable to other places without worrying about being rotten. "Without Sago, Ambon shall stop functioning" that is what Shirley noted in the book of Ambon: Island of spices. Sago palm is harvested after 15 years. The sago palm is a multi purposes plant. Every part of its tree can be used for the needs of Maluku, such as tree trunk is for house wall or leaves of sago for house roof.

Birds

Maluku has variety of fauna; even numbers of them are special for this region and cannot be found in others. Especially knowing Maluku is included in Wallacea region, which is the region of the exchange character of flora & fauna in western part of Indonesia (Asia character) with Australian character in Eastern part. It has also various types of fowl, including type of birds, which exist in Maluku. Out of 402 limited spread bird species in Indonesia. 225 of them or 56% are limited spread birds, live in Wallacea region. And 213 of them can only be found in Wallacea region. In Wallacea region, Maluku is the richest region, which has 116, limited spread bird species with 90 species of them can only be found in Maluku. From this number of birds among others are: Black-capped lorry (lorious lorry), Greater bird of paradise (paradisaea apoda), King Cockatoo (probosciger-aterima), and Casuary (casuarius). One of the famous types of bird due to its beauty is bird of paradise. With its beauty has made the queen of Spain Marie Christine de Bourbone (circa 1830) to use Bird of paradise on her crown. Assuming that the decreasing numbers of this type of birds were caused by the habit of women to use this bird as a hair decoration during that age.

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About Maluku: The History

The Portuguese reached Maluku in 1511, but the Dutch, who arrived in 1599, colonized the region later. Once known as the Mollucas, the famed Spice Islands, were once fought over by Indian, Arab, Chinese and later European traders.

Maluku Province is blessed with fabulous sea gardens, idyllic, tropical beaches and spectacular landscapes rich with an enormous variety of endemic plant and animal species. The forest-coated mountains of the islands are home to brilliantly colored king fishers, the red-crested Mollucan cockatoo, and many multi-colored lorikeets and parrots. There are over 1,000 islands in the province most of which are uninhabited, 90% of Maluku is water, which flows over one of the world's most active volcanic belt. Maluku is also remarkable in that it lies across the most visible zone of transition between Asian and Australian fauna and flora, and also because of its Malay-based cultures of western Indonesia and Melanesia. Forts scattered all over the islands stand as reminders of Maluku's history, when in the 16th and 17th centuries Europeans established their influence and powered in the region. They also left their mark on many other aspects of life in the islands including music, dance and religion, making the local culture a fascinating blend of east and west.

The main gateway into Maluku is through the provincial capital of Ambon, which is served by regular flights to most parts of the archipelago. Air and sea transportation connects the islands themselves together very well with 79 seaports and 25 airports. Good roads on many of the islands provide easy access to the more remote interest places. Further to the east, is a torrid land rising from the sea with snowcaps covering 5,000 meter-high mountain peaks, towering over glacier lakes and some of the most impenetrable jungles in the world. The land is Papua, which is Indonesia's largest and most eastern province. It is a land of exceptional natural splendor, with beautiful scenic beaches, immense stretches of marshlands, cool grassy meadows and powerful rivers cutting gorges and tunnels through dark, dense primeval forests.

The people of the island can be divided into more than 250 sub-groups, which are closely related to the islands along the southern rim of the Pacific and include among others, the Marind-anim, Yah'ray, Asmat, Mandobo, Dani and Afyat. Those in the central highlands still preserve their customs and traditions and, because communications have always been difficult here, different tribes have lived for centuries in isolation of each other for the most part, resulting in an incredibly diverse cultures and languages mixture. Jayapura Provincial capital is built on hills that slope down to the sea and is accessible by boat and plane. It was here in fact, that General MacArthur assembled his fleet for the invasion of the Philippines during the Second World War, remains of which can still be found.

Maluku people have been sailors and traders for thousands of years. The earliest archaeological evidence of human occupation of the region is about thirty-two thousand years old, but the evidence of even older settlements in Australia may mean that Maluku had earlier visitors. The evidence of increasingly long-distance trading relationships and of more frequent occupation of many islands, begins about ten to fifteen thousand years later. Onyx beads and segments of silver plate used as currency on the Indian subcontinent around 200BC have been unearthed on some of the islands. In addition, local dialects employ derivations of the Malay word then in use for 'silver', in contrast to the term used in wider Melanesian society, which has etymological roots in Chinese, a consequence of the regional trade with China that developed in the 500s and 600s.

Although the cultures varied across this dispersed group of islands, there is a sense in which the Moluccas were a cosmopolitan society, in that traders from across the region took residence in Moluccan settlements, or in nearby enclaves, to conduct the spice business. Arab and Chinese traders frequently visited or lived in the region.

In 1513 the Portuguese landed on Ambon Island, which produced some cloves, but also played an entropy role in the region. A Portuguese fort and a degree of security followed, helped by a buffer of indigenous Christian converts who were settled about the fort and formed the nucleus of what became Ambon city (the current capital of Maluku province). But the Portuguese presence on Ambon Island was regularly challenged by attacks from indigenous Muslims on the island's northern coast, in particular Hitu, which had trading and religious links with major port cities on Java's north coast. Indeed, the Portuguese never managed to control the spices local trade, and failed in attempts to establish their authority over Banda Island, the nearby centre of nutmeg production. The Spaniards took control of Ternate and Tidore. While the Roman Catholicism slowly spread among the Ambon native population (for a time the missionary Saint Francis Xavier who resided in Ambon) most of the region remained as Moslems.

The Dutch arrived empts to monopolize their traditional trade. After the Ambonese helped in 1599 and reported indigenous discontent with Portuguese at the Dutch to construct a fort at Hitu Larna, the Portuguese begun a campaign of retribution against, which the Ambonese invited Dutch aid. After 1605 Frederik Houtman became the first Ambon Dutch governor.

The Dutch East-India Company was a company with three obstacles in its way: the Portuguese, controlling the aboriginal populations, and the British. Again smuggling would be the only alternative to a European monopoly. Among other events in 17th century, the Bandanese attempted independent trade with British, the East-India Company's response was to decimate the native population of Banda Islands sending the survivors fleeing to other islands and installing slave labors.

Though other races re-settled the Banda Islands, the rest of Maluku remained uneasy under foreign control and even after the Portuguese had a new trading station at Macassar there were native revolts in 1636 and 1646. Under the company control northern Maluku had administered by Dutch residency of Ternate, and the southern by "Amboyna" (Ambon).

During the Japanese occupation in World War II, the Moluccans fled to the mountains but begun a campaign of resistance also known as the South Mollucan Brigade. After the war's end the island's political leaders had successful discussions with the Netherlands about independence. Complicated by Indonesian demands, the Round Table Conference Agreements were signed in 1949 transferring Maluku to Indonesia with mechanisms for the islands to choose or opt out of the new Indonesia. The Agreements granted Moluccans the right to determine their ultimate sovereignty.

With the declaration of a unitary republic of Indonesia in 1950 to replace the federal state, South Maluku attempted to secede. This movement was led by Ch. Soumokil (former Supreme Prosecutor of the Eastern Indonesia State) and supported by the Moluccan members of the Netherlands special troops. Lacking support from the locals, this movement was crushed by Indonesian army and by the special agreement with Netherlands the troops were transferred to Netherlands.

Maluku is one of the first Indonesia provinces, proclaimed in 1945 until 1999, when North Maluku and Central Halmahera Regencies were split off as a separate province of North Maluku. Its capital is Ternate, on a small island to the west of the large Halmahera Island. The capital of Maluku province remains at Ambon.

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About Maluku

MALUKU

Maluku (Moluccas), a region of Indonesia formerly known as the Spice Islands, was once the source of cloves and nutmeg, spices highly valued for their aroma, preservative ability, and use in medicine before people learned how to cultivate the plants in other parts of the world. Maluku is a cluster of about one thousand islands totaling 74,504 square kilometers, forming part of the Malay Archipelago in eastern Indonesia near New Guinea. The region is divided into two provinces, Maluku with its capital in Ambon, and North Maluku (2002 estimated population 913,000), with its capital in Ternate; other important islands in the group include Halmahera, Seram, and Buru.

Its approximately 1000 islands support a population of less than 1.7 million people. The average population density figure is 19 people per-square kilometer, but the distribution is uneven. Air and sea transportation is the main means, which link the islands together. The province has 32 seaports and 20 airports, and only about 160 km of roads. However, good roads on many of the islands provide eas

Maluku lies in the transition zone between Asiatic and Australian flora and fauna and has a tropical climate. Maluku's flora includes meranti trees and many kinds of orchids; distinctive fauna includes cuscuses, birds of paradise, wild goats, and parrots. The economy is based on subsistence agriculture, especially sago (the sago palm, producing a starch used in food), and on the export of such products as spices, cacao, coffee, coconuts, fish, and minerals. Important indigenous groups include the Ambonese.

A great variety of endemic plant and animal species are found in the rugged forest-covered and mountainous hinterlands of most of the islands. A few of the best known are the Rucker-tailed kingfisher, the red-crested Moluccan cockatoo, and various brilliantly colored lorikeets and parrots. Most of Maluku sits astride one of the world's most volatile volcanic belts.

GEOGRAPHICALLY

Maluku province with its capital Ambon, stay at 30 north latitudes 8,300 south latitudes and 1250 - 1350 east longitudes with the area boundaries: 

North side: North Maluku Province

South side: Timor Leste and Australia

West Side: Southeast Sulawesi and Central Sulawesi

East Side: Irian Jaya Province

THE WIDE AREA

The wide area of Maluku province is 712.479,69 km_, with the land wide is 54.185km_ and sea wide is 658.294,69km_. 

The Maluku Province plain is 85.728 km2 width or 8.572.800 Ha contain of 3 part that is:

- Flat Land: 1.251.630 Ha width (14,6%)

- Wavy Land: 2.417.530 Ha width (28,2%)

- Hilly and Mountainous Land: 4.903.640 Ha width (57,2%)

Almost, Maluku has no upland. The mountain is a back that spread in the middle of the island, forming the mountain with the highest of 3.055 m.

TOPOGRAPHY

Maluku province consists of mountains, islands that spread from west to east and form north to south among 1150 km.

GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION AREA

Administratively, Maluku Province divided into four regencies and one city that is:

1. Central Maluku regency with 15 districts, 296 villages and 6 sub-districts.

2. Southeast Maluku regency with 8 districts, 229 villages and 6 sub-districts.

3. West-Southeast Maluku regency with 5 districts, 187 villages and 1 sub-district.

4. Buru regency with 3 districts, 62 villages.

5. Ambon city with 3 districts, 30 villages and 20 sub-districts.

CLIMATE

Maluku has 2 seasons, that is: west season or north, and southeast or east. West season in Maluku is come from December until March, while April is transition season to southeast season. Southeast season is average 6 months begin from May and end on October. The transition to West season is on November. 

The homogenate seasons are give different affect to the land and its sea in this region. The temperature is about 26,2 C (in Southeast Maluku especially in rainy).

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