Fun-ction
Yesterday we had a nice function here at Dokmai Garden - a birthday party with 28 guests. It was fun for us as well as for the guests. Since Chiang Mai is perfect for garden parties in late November to early April when there is very low risk of rain and hardly no insects, we should like to share our program to inspire other people. Timing during the day is important, i.e. if you begin too early it can be too hot, too sharp light and too many flies, and if you begin too late you may not see anything in the garden.
This was yesterday’s program (January 24th, 2012):
15.30. Arrival – welcome drinks, photos. We suggest only drinking non-alcoholic drinks such as rosella and water to keep people alert for a while more. The area for this reception should be shady.
16.00. A one hour activity. We offered a guided excursion in our 10 acres garden with the theme ‘edible tropical plants’.
17.00. Refreshments when returning back from the garden. White wine, beer, water, soft drinks. At yesterday’s party this was also the time for opening presents and making speeches.
18.00. Outdoor dinner. At this time in January it is still light enough for another picture or two, but dark enough to be past the flies’ bed-time. For light we mainly use candles, oil lamps and torches to create a romantic atmosphere, only keeping the electric light (warm white) near bathrooms and kitchen. With the sparkling stars as a dining room ceiling and the sounds of the tropical night as a background music you create a nice ambience. Nocturnal mosquitos are generally not carriers of dengue fever, but reducing any mosquitos will further enhance the experience. It is therefore clever to prepare for repellents, although at yesterday’s party we offered fresh citronella straight from the plant. Reducing levels of mosquitos by putting lids on water barrels and predatory fish such as tiger barbs in water pots are simple measures.
19.00. Launching of lanterns (kum loi). This is a tradition still alive in northern Thailand where we live dangerously. The lantern is made of paper with some solid flammable fuel tied to a cross of thin metal wire. When lighting the fuel hot air fills the paper bag and the lanterns take off – very beautiful! The party ended with this event and the guests returned in rented mini vans.
The ambience of a dinner is important. In general it is clever to plan a garden party on a Monday-Thursday and to be aware of Thai holidays. The reason is to avoid the roaring karaoke from a Thai farmer’s party. Dokmai Garden is normally very quiet, far from traffic and barking dogs.
Good luck with arranging your own garden party. Should you like to hold your party at Dokmai Garden, then simply e-mail info at dokmaigarden.co.th
Eric Danell & Ketsanee Seehamongkol
Ketsanee Seehamongkol
A recipe for cooking the golden apple snail
In a previous blog we remarked that the South American golden apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata, ‘hoi cherry’) is the most severe pest in Thai rice fields, and so many Thai farmers spray their rice fields with chemicals. Thanks to garden school student Emily Driskill from Washington an interview was made with the Seehamongkol family who run Dokmai Garden in Chiang Mai. Khun Densak proudly declared that in Esan (northeastern Thailand) they have no problems with this snail since the farmers eat them! We always heard the golden apple snail was disgusting and so any attempts to export it as ‘escargot’ was futile. To test the gastronomical value we asked for a cooking demonstration next lunch. This is how Khun Densak prepared the snails:
1. Collect seven snails.
2. Boil in water for five minutes.
3. Use a knife to scoop out the soft parts and discard the shell and the hard operculum (the ‘door’).
4. Remove everything orange (the gonads or egg masses).
5. Dig out and discard the bulb-like, hard structure of the head which Khun Densak calls ‘the eye’ (in reality the buccal mass composed of the mouth with its calcareous jaws and the pharynx). According to Khun Densak, some people back in Roi-Et in Esan eat the buccal mass too, and as a result they get drunk! We have never heard about this hallucinogenic reaction before! Is it true? We did not dare to test that. Please share your experience with us!
6. Cut the remaining meat in pieces.
7. Add some living adult red weaver ants.
8. Add 4-5 leaves of mint.
9. Add two raw shallots.
10. Add one teaspoon of fried sticky rice powder.
11. Add three sprays of fish sauce.
12. Add a pinch of salt.
13. Add some chili.
14. Add 1 teaspoon of Esan anchovy (pla ra).
15. Add one chopped spring onion.
16. Serve cold and decorate with mint leaves.
This dish was actually good, reminding one of mussels. We asked the maid Gong from Ayuttaya if she ever ate these snails, but she said she did not. Our past experience from interviews with Thai farmers is that they answer the question exactly, and rarely add any vital information voluntarily. We therefore rephrased the question: “Does anyone in your former neighbourhood eat these snails?”. She said they certainly do, often frying them. We are surprised that the literature claims the reason for these snails being such a menace in the rice fields is the absence of natural predators, while man seems like a good one.
Take seven snails…
Here are two hard, bulb-like buccal masses. Remove them or you will be drunk! This is not necessary when cooking the indigenous black Thai snail Pila polita (‘hoi kong’).
The dish is not ready yet, red weaver ants are still crawling.
Bon appétit!
Eric Danell & Emily Driskill
More birds
Yesterday we made an experiment. We bird-watched at Dokmai Garden in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand at sunrise 06.30-08, and then again around noon and then again around 17.00 in the afternoon. The aim was to see if we saw different birds during different times, to compare with the previous day and also, as always, look out for new species.
Results: we saw and heard 36 species of wild birds. Early morning species were for instance Common Koel, Asian Barred Owlet, and Red-wattled Lapwing. Even at 08 birds like Green Bee-eater, Hoopoe, Palm swift, House swallow and Richard’s Pipit were still absent. Around noon many species could be found, but in the late afternoon not many species were observed. The absence of many species during the early morning might be an effect of the cold season, while bird-watching in the warm season March-April may be different. This night the minimum temperature was 16.4°C, much warmer than the previous nights where minimum were around 10-11 °C.
The previous day’s new sighting of the Grey-chinned Minivet was repeated. That female sat in the same mango. However, many birds which we saw the day before, we did not see yesterday: Scarlet-backed Flowerpecker, Olive-backed Sunbird, Purple Sunbird, Coppersmith Barbet. Species we did not record yesterday, nor the day before with the English bird-watchers, we heard or saw in the morning before the English arrived (wood peckers and Black eagle). It clearly shows that one can not expect to see everything in just one short visit.
Yesterday we also documented two new species to Dokmai Garden: Red-rumped swallow and long-tailed shrike. The latter one had a call like the European Fieldfare, and although loud it could move inside a hedge without shaking the branches to reveal itself. While writing this I observed a third new species: Asian Brown Flycatcher. The total list of wild birds observed at Dokmai Garden is now 85 species.
Birdwatching and orchid watching are somewhat similar in that you need binoculars and you need to bend your neck to look up into the trees. Thanks to this activity we discovered a hitherto overlooked and big specimen of the wild orchid Cymbidium aloifolium (Orchidaceae) up in the ancient Dokmai Garden forest mango (Mangifera caloneura, Anacardiaceae). The first admirers arrived not long after, four tourists and orchid lovers from Cordoba in Argentina (our first visitors from that country).
Eric Danell and Emily Driskill
Chiang Mai bird-watching
On the 18th of January we had the honour of receiving avid bird-watchers Derek and Sandra Roe from Great Britain. Although they arrived at mid-day, we quickly saw or heard 25 species of wild birds in a quiet landscape. Interestingly, three new bird species were added to the Dokmai Garden bird list, now including 81 wild bird species. Thanks to Derek’s camera we could document these birds, which was important since sometimes a simple sighting during a split second could be debated. One sighting was a juvenile raptor of the ‘Changeable Hawk-Eagle’, the other two were high elevation birds: ‘the Grey-Chinned Minivet’ and the ‘Flavescent Bulbul’. We believe these birds had enough of the cold and took a recovery tourist trip to the Chiang Mai valley to heat up a bit.
The garden school students and I saw and heard many more bird species that day, and inspired by the fact the present cold seemed to force mountain birds down to the valley, the garden school student Emily Driskill and I have decided to do some serious birdwatching from 06.30 on Friday. We prepare by listening to Tony Ball’s excellent Thai bird call CD:s, reading bird books and cleaning the binoculars. We keep you posted!
A female Grey-Chinned Minivet takes a rest in a Dokmai Garden mango tree. Normally they stay at a much higher elevation, but the past few days’ cold may have triggered a sudden interest in our garden in the valley. We offer safety from poachers, fire, cats and dogs, and we offer love, organic insects and fruits to all birds in need.
Text: Eric Danell
Photo: Derek Roe
The coldest night…
…minimum temperature at Dokmai Garden last night (17th-18th of January 2012) was 10.0 °C, an all-time record low! To make our foreign readers understand, Thais have no indoor heating, and in a wooden house with poor insulation the sleeping temperature is just a few degrees higher. In the nearby village in the Mae Kanin Tai valley it is usually 5 degrees cooler. Higher up in the mountains the temperature is below the freezing point. Currently we have two garden school students (from Australia and USA) and so we sip coffee in the morning sun to heat up like reptiles. Luckily, all afternoons reach 29-32 °C.
A tropical nightcap
The night between the 15th and 16th of January 2012 was the coolest we have ever measured at Dokmai Garden in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand: 11.5°C. It gets light at 06.30 but by 07.27 it was still 11.6 °C. Half an hour later the temperature had already climbed to 12.4°C – the mornings heat up quickly in the tropics.
An interesting phenomenon is that some mushrooms are nocturnal. They seem too brittle to stand the daylight sun, and so they expand their primordia and shed their spores within a few dark hours, and disappear in the late morning. I have seen Psathyrella and inky caps (Coprinus s. lat.) do that. The vegetative mycelia of these mushrooms seem to thrive on grass cuttings and so many early mornings the lawn is sprinkled with little mushroom parachutes – very cute! An exact ID of this mushroom species demands a specialist on tropical Coprinus, so I simply call them nightcaps.
Text & Photo: Eric Danell
A nice source of knowledge and seeds of tropical fruits
Daley’s Tropical Seed Nursery in Australia has lovely web pages and an interesting forum which should be useful to many Chiang Mai gardeners too. Their passion for what they are doing is clear and contagious. Phil@Tyalgum has contributed with a lot of interesting information, and at Dokmai Garden we are most grateful for kind help and support.
Seeds of Central American ‘black sapote’ or ‘chocolate pudding tree’ (Diospyros digyna, Ebenaceae).
Eric & Ketsanee (15°C at 08 this morning).
January blossom
While writing this blog, we have some droplets of rain (2 mm so far this year) and the temperature was 20°C at 09.30. Within sight I can admire the pink cloud of the foaming Congea tomentosa (Lamiaceae), ‘Pride of Lanna’. This is a handsome and native liana which also blooms in the Chiang Mai jungles now, one of the few plants that does. Another very welcome sight is the splendid orange blossom of ‘ton kwaw’ Butea monosperma (Fabaceae), the Chiang Mai province tree. This is actually 2-3 weeks later than last year’s blossom. Maybe the heavy rains in September-October forced the blooming period forward a bit? Some plants regulate their activities based on changes in day length (photoperiod), some react to temperature, some react to moisture. This tree is not yet in blossom at Dokmai Garden, and yesterday I only saw one tree in bloom in Namprae south of Chiang Mai. Saraca indica (Fabaceae) is still in beautiful orange blossom. As to native orchid flowers I have already blogged about the tarantula leg (Dendrobium senile) and the lion tooth Bulbophyllum lobbii.
These examples are seasonal native monsoon plants. Some plants make flowers almost all year round, such as Ixora spp, Thunbergia laurifolia, Uvaria grandiflora, Tabernaemontana pachysiphon and the South American lilavadee (Plumeria spp).
As to less colourful blossom, there is a massive mango blossom (Mangifera spp. Anacardiaceae) right now. Some trees already produce fruit primordia and their crops should be safe, but later varieties may have a poor crop this year due to this rain. Such rains are not abnormal, we had them during the previous two years too. The mango relative cashew (Anacardium occidentale, Anacardiaceae) also began making their tiny pink flowers now, and to my experience mango rains are bad for the production of cashew apples too.
A really nice flower in blossom now is South American Gliricidia sepium (Fabaceae), ‘mother of coffee’ (there are many). They appear like cherry blossom, pink on naked or near-naked branches, but they are pea flowers. Being crispy and sweet, they are perfect ingredients when making an exotic tropical salad. Unfortunately they almost always sooner or later attract aphids, but in this early stage of blossom the trees are so sweet.
In addition to the flowers, a gardener may consider foliage and sculptural shape of trees. Yesterday we had visitors representing a gardening magazine in Canada, and they said that during their 3 months long trip in Asia, they had seen a beautiful tree in four countries, but nobody had been able to tell them what the tree was. At Dokmai Garden they saw it too:
What makes Dokmai Garden different from other gardens is our passion for plants (we live here and we love the plants, they are not just a 9-5 job), our personal approach (we like to chat with visitors) and we make efforts and investments in sharing knowledge. Beautiful gardens can be found everywhere in Asia, but if you wish to know more about these tropical plants, there are only a handful of educational gardens in South Asia.
Text & Photo: Eric Danell
How to cook dog tongue
‘Lin ma’ (dog tongue) is a dessert commonly sold in the Chiang Mai markets. To my understanding it is simply sesame seeds pounded in a mortar. The rich oil makes a nice black paste which is shaped into a rectangle (a tongue) and wrapped in plastic. Eat it with a spoon after your main course – very delicious and very cheap! I strongly believe that sesame would be a valuable crop in the dry season of Chiang Mai and Esan. Sesame oil is expensive.
While writing dark clouds appear in the sky, and Ketsanee reported rain in San Patong, the district south of Dokmai Garden. For the past two years, we have had a January shower. I do not like that. The mangos are in excellent blossom, the big wild forest mango is just beginning making thousands of flowers. A rain may spoil the harvest – again!
Text & Photo: Eric Danell
Valuable contributions
Judging from the billion dollar industry involving orchids, and judging from the many orchid societies and orchid shows around the world, we thought it would be not too difficult to get a steady flow of support for our modest Orchid Ark. As it turns out, 99.99% want something personal in return for donating money. Not a single Thai-based orchid nursery has contributed and the Thai government only tax us. Therefore we decided not to waste time on raising funds, but simply pay for lab material and excursions from our own pockets, work for free and spend time making the scientific knowledge comprehensive, popularized and free (see our blog Dokmai Dogma, a free resource which would cost millions to set up with paid university professors). With such a philosophy it is always a pleasant surprise to receive unexpected support. Recently we received two generous donations which we wish to acknowledge: June Freeman & Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo.
June who visited Dokmai Garden last year left a generous monetary contribution for which we are most grateful. Margaret From who works at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo in USA, is also involved in Orchid propagation and restoration. She sent us a large box with most useful and brand-new laboratory material.
Thank you for a much needed encouragement and for making resources available to us!
Ketsanee Seehamongkol
Eric Danell
