Giant sensitive tree (Mimosa pigra)

Giant sensitive tree (Mimosa pigra) is a species of Mimosa in Fabaceae that forms dense shrubs, woody, thorny and widely spread throughout the tropics, especially in wet areas. These legumes have a height of up to 6 m, the stem is greenish in young plants but becomes brown wood when the plant is enlarged.

M. pigra is armed with spines up to 7 mm long on the trunk, bright green leaves and bipinnate where smaller spines stand in the middle 20 to 25 cm long with 5 cm pinnae lengths to 16 pairs, each divided into pairs for lengths of 3 to 8 mm. The leaves fold when touched and the night comes.

Pink flowers 1 cm in diameter. Each flower head produces a group of 10 to 20 seed pods which then break into hairy segments and each contains seeds. Mature seeds are light brown to brown, hard and can remain idle for at least 23 years in sandy soil.

Giant sensitive trees germinate throughout the year on moist soil but do not flood and most germination at the beginning and end of the rainy season. Seedling growth is very fast and flowering after 4 to 12 months. The process from flower buds to mature seeds takes about five weeks.

Kingdom: Plantae
- : Angiosperms
- : Eudicots
- : Rosids
Order: Fabales
Family: Fabaceae
Subfamily: Caesalpinioideae
- : Mimosoid clade
Genus: Mimosa
Species: M. pigra

Thomas Sutikna lives with Homo floresiensis

BLOG - On October 28, 2004, a paper was published in Nature describing the dwarf hominin we know today as Homo floresiensis that has shocked the world. The report changed the geographical landscape of early humans that previously stated that the Pleistocene Asia was only represented by two species, Homo erectus and Homo sapiens . The report titled "A new small-bodied hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia" written by Peter Brown and Mike J. Morwood from the University of New England with Thomas Sutikna, Raden Pandji Soejono, Jatmiko, E. Wahyu Saptomo and Rokus Awe Due from the National Archaeology Research Institute (ARKENAS), Indonesia, presents more diversity in the genus Homo. “Immediately, my fever vanished. I couldn’t sleep well that night. I couldn’t wait for sunrise. In the early morning we went to the site, and when we arrived in the cave, I didn’t say a thing because both my mind and heart couldn’t handle this incredible moment. I just went down...

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Cogon grass (Imperata cylindrica)

Alang-alang or cogon grass ( Imperata cylindrica ) is a plant species in Poaceae, annual grass, sharp leaf, long buds and scaly, creeping under the ground, very adaptive and grows in all climates which often become weeds on agricultural land. I. cylindrica has a sharp pointed tip of the bud and emerges from the ground, height of 0.2-1.5 m but in other places it may be more, short stems, rising up to the ground and flowering white or purplish, often with wreath of hair under the segment. Leaf strands in the form of long ribbons, lancet-tipped with a narrow base and gutter-shaped, 12-80 cm long, very coarse edge and jagged sharply, long hair at the base with broad, pale leaf bones in the middle. The flowers are panicles, 6-28 cm long with long-haired and white-colored ears for 1 cm which are used as a tool to blow off the fruit when ripe. Cogon grass breeds quickly with seeds that spread quickly with the wind or through rhizomes that quickly penetrate the soil. Alang-alang does...

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