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Popular Names of Plants in Malaya 
«£,M?B.CAalk by E,J.H.Cprner, Botanical Gardens,Singapore v 
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The Rain-tree, the Angsana, the Durian, Vanda Miss Joachim and 
Bougainvillea Mrs, Butt. f I think you all know, without doubt, the plants 
tha-4 I mean. And if I were to talk of kapur,chengai,n^bong, or bakau, our 
minds would also turn to the same subjects. But, if I were to tellyou of the 
Meogkulang and Qhelagi trees round the padang at Kota Bahru,in the shade of 
which rickshaw-pullers and peons loll,would you picture the Bunga Tanjong 
or u' 
and the Aaam Jawa/, as the trees are called in most parts of Malaya? And if 
I were to tell you that Buah Pisang is collected from large shady trees 
60 feet high at Kuala Trengganu, you wii± think me just an ordinary, mistaken 
traveller who has spent but a few hourd ashore gleaning tit-bits for a novel. 
You may learn that Jambu Gajus is eaten in Singapore, Jambu Golok in Malacca, 
and Buah Keterek in Kota Bahru, but you might not be able to discover so easily 
that they were merely local names for the Cashew-nut, The Custard Apple which 
I saw last month in a garden in Johore was smooth and brown. How can that be^ 
you say,because our Custard Apples are green and Jjnobbly? I am afraid we have 
fallen into a bad habit in Malaya and have muddled up the English names for 
these West Indian fruits, for what we call the Custard Apple is really the 
Sweet Sop or Sugar Appleatx^ and the true Custard Apple or Bullock f s Heart 
is seldom seen in our markets. Likewise there may be confusion over the 
Flame of the Forest, If we have any listeners in India, they will think not 
of the feath ry foliaged trees which we know so well, but of the Dadap-like 
tree called Bute a fron dosa which is not grown in Malaya, In India, our Flame 
of the Forest is called the Gul Mohur or Flamboyant, The other day, too, I 
was reading in an Agricultural report from New Guinea about some varieties of 
Yam and Keladi which were recommended as vegetables. The popular names of these 
plants were quite unknown to me but I could hardly believeK that we had not 
got the same plants, or some very like them , in Malaya,especially as Mr, 
Burkill, a former Director of the Singapore Botanical Gardens, had made an 
extensive study o^jf tropical Yams and had collected together living plants 
of a great many varieties, the better of which have since been distributed 
over the country. Nevertheless, to satisfy my curiosity, I ask-d the 
Director of Agriculture at Raboul in New Guinea to send me some tubersthat 
we may grow in the Botanical Gardens, for comparison. 
The further afield we goin the study of plants,the more uncertain do we 
become of their identity because of their different popular names.The conclusion 
is often reachedthat it is little use employingpopular names; and how botpnists 
have overcome this difficulty* by their systemof scientific nomenclature. 
Dr, Furtado told you in his talk a fortnight ago. But there cannot be a living 
code of scientific names for reference without a great deal of botanical research 
and unless a large staff of botpnists is maintained to interpret and perpetuate 
botanical science, such as there is in Soviet Russiaand the United States, 
In tropical Asia we are very far from the attainraentsof these countries. The 
flora has been studied by few botonists and its very richness renders it so 
much more complicated than a temperate flora. As a sidelight on this difficulty 
. niay recall the remark of Sir Joseph Hooker, who was the Director of the 
a Royal Botanic^at Kew in England and was one of the botanical pioneers in the 
Himalayas: to be capable of studying a tropical flora, Hooker said that a 
bot.onist must memorize the names and diagnostic characters of at least 4000 
species of plants. Hooker was thinking mainly of flowering plants and ferns, 
and nowadays we must add the host of fungi, of which there are probably 
between twenty and thirty thousand species in Malaya, Names we must have and 
names uniformly applied. And where there are no botanical names or for sundry 
reasons they cannot be discovered, we must use vernacular names. Thus it h 
happens that Malay, Tamil, and Chinese names acquire unwonted significance 
in the East, particularly in the study of economic plants. Moreover, who but 
botonists will trouble to remember scientific names, and they only when they 
cannot reasonably use popular ones? I have forgotten the botanical names of 
the pear and the apple, the walnut, the cricket-bat willow and the licuorice 
plant, but I could look them up in a dictionary at the BptanicalGarderis 
and very quickly discover a host of information. In Malaya, despite the 
research which has been done, only in comparatively few cases will a popular 
name lead one to a correct identification,What is Pak Choy? What is Keladi 
Pinang? What is Trong pip#£t or Daun Kechubong?vqiat is Urd Dhal orMung? What 
is Kedeleh,Kechapior Setul? Only too frequently we cannot reply unless we 
have a specimen to identify, I have imagined a great index wherein all these 
vernacular names are correctly set against their botanical equivalents, so 
that the answer can be given without even setting down the telephone receiver. 
Now I do not mean to say that we have no such indexes to consult in 
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