The Botanic Gardens is Our Green Heritage and Green Future
By Thomas Uhl
March 2024FEATUREThis special edition of Malaysia’s stamp from 2002 features the lush pink flowers of the
cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis)—perhaps the most distinctive plant in the Penang Botanic Gardens. Planted when it was first opened in 1886, the cannonball trees werebrought over to Penang by the British colonial government to replace the rain trees (Samanea saman) that were planted at the entrance of the park on 20 June 1887, to celebrate the 50 th anniversary of Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne.
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“THE WATERFALL GARDEN occupies the lower slopes of a valley leading into the hills, whose forest covered slopes enclose it on all sides. At the head is the waterfall and reservoir, below which the stream and its tributaries flow though the garden,” described R. E. Holttum, then director of the Botanic Gardens, in 1934. [1] The place is named after the impressive waterfall in its grounds, which tumbles down 30 to 40 feet.
Thomas Uhl, a member of the Friends of the Botanical Garden in Halle, Germany, has been living on the grounds of the Penang Botanic Gardens for a year. He shares with Penang Monthly trinkets and mementos he found while doing research on the gardens.
The hardworking ladies at the Friends of the Penang Botanic Gardens Society hand-printed and painted this fabric with four green leaves with toothed edges—Plectranthus barbatus. This plant is a subshrub and its purple-blue blossoms are arranged in racemose inflorescences that are up to 25cm long. The Friends of the Penang Botanic Gardens Society aims to increase public appreciation for and education about plants and environment by promoting horticultural activities, scientific research and the conservation of plants and the environment at the Penang Botanic Gardens.This postcard shows the former orchid house in the Penang Botanic Gardens, probably built of wood in 1887. On the back of this original and unused postcard is printed “A. Kaulfuss, Penang”. August Kaulfuss, a German photographer (1861-1908), who worked and lived in Penang had the postcards printed and hand-tinted in Germany.A letter sent by Mohammed Haniff (1872-1930), an important botanist in Penang and the son of Indian immigrants, to the director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. At the time, he commuted between the Botanic Gardens of these two cities. Here, he was the assistant of Charles Curtis, the first superintendent of the Penang Botanic Gardens; Haniff was an assistant curator in Singapore until 1926. When the Penang Botanic Gardens faced the threat of being flooded into a reservoir, Haniff used his own funds to keep the Gardens, including the payment of needed staff. Source: Singapore Botanic Gardens. Penang is the island of the betel nut palms (Areca catechu)—literally in Malay, Pulau Pinang. This stamp shows betel nut sets, which are used to store areca nuts. These nuts are chopped into small pieces, wrapped in betel leaves (Piper betle) with lime paste and other ingredients, such as tobacco, and chewed. It was traditionally served at the end of formal meetings, and was a ceremonious gesture to honour guests. “At the beginning of the 20th century, betel chewing was practised by 80 to 90 percent of the local population throughout South East Asia, but its popularity has dropped dramatically…” Simon Gardner wrote in his book, Heritage Trees of Penang.
*Note: See Penang Monthly’s 2017 issue for a feature on the history of the Penang Botanic Gardens.
References
[1] The Waterfall Garden Penang, R. E. Holttum, Singapore, 1934
Thomas Uhl
has been living for a year in Penang. He organised a stamp exhibition titled “The Botanical Gardens of Penang, Malaysia and Halle, Germany”. Thomas is from Halle, Germany, where he writes for a neighbourhood newspaper and in philatelic journals.
