Plant Life

Ujung kulon National Park is one of the last remaining natural forest on Java and one of very few areas offering a profile of sea-shore to mountain top tropical vegetation. The park holds well over 700 species of plant life of which at least 57 are classified as rare in Java, and perhaps the world.

Although a great deal of Ujungkulon’s forest is as it was centuries ago, some areas have been modified by the force of nature. Tidal waves from the Krakatau eruption have inundated the northern shores and volcanic ash deposits at times have impeded plant growth.

People have also played a role in altering some of the park’s vegetation. Areas of Ujungkulon were once cultivated by the local people – the grazing grounds of the Cigenter and Cidaon were past village and paddy field sites – and until the 1930’s the land was being burnt to increase grassland for game hunting.

LOWLAND RAIN FOREST

Among the most fascinating of the park’s plant life are the many species of figs. These can take the form of trees, climbers of epiphytes and are the larders of forest that provide abundant fruit for the wildlife.

The strangling fig begins from seeds deposited in cavities in the trunks or branches of large trees by birds, bats and other small animals. Once germinated, the fig sends veils of tendrils down into the soil which then form a lattice work of roots around the trunk of the host tree. Eventually, over-whelmed by the vigorous fig, the host tree dies and rots away, leaving within the roots of the fig the hollow shape of original tree, its strangled victim.

A number of trees such as the Kigentel, the Tokbray and the Kondang produce flowers and fruit on their lower trunks or larger branches rather than at the usual twig ends.

Why this interesting characteristic, called cauliflory, has evolved is puzzling. One theory is that the fruit of these plants, being more accessible to larger animals, allows the seed to be scattered over a wider area. However, other animal such as monkeys and birds become more vulnerable because they must leave the safety of forest canopy to feed upon the cauliflorous fruit.

The climbing lianas are feature of rain forests and grow towards the light without damaging the host tree. These vines only fruit and flower in the forest canopy and to regenerate must reach the sunlight. They create aerial pathway for wildlife, assisting in their search for food and in seed dispersal. Several species which include kawao, leuksa and asahan are water-logged with sap.

Not only animals benefit from climbing plants. Certain climbers are high medicinal value and are used in the treatment of cancer and in Indonesian traditional tonics jamu. Others provide the Derris root powder used in insecticides or the latex in chewing gums while yet another produces a substance that is 1.500 times sweeter than sugar.

Another climber is the aggressive rattan, valued in furniture making, which use the thorns on its whip-like tendrils to attach itself to vegetation and passers-by. The angle of thorns enables the rattan to anchor deeper with any attempt to pull away from it. As with other palm, its tightly folded immature leaves are very palatable to wildlife.

One of the characteristics of Ujungkulon’s forest is the wide variety of palms of which the most common is the langkap. Although these forests are found in very few other locations in the whole of the Malayan region, its rapid regeneration and ability to spread into undisturbed forest has made this a dominant species in Ujungkulon.

Rain forests also hold a wide variety of epiphytes and although they also grown on trees, inflict no harm. They include the splendid bird’s-nest ferns and an abundance of orchids. The brilliant white with a yellow centre Moon orchid, the deep red Pipit orchid, the white to purple Squirrel tail which only opens for one day, are just a few of the varieties.

PRIMARY FOREST

The most obvious characteristic of these areas are large trees with high canopies and more open undergrowth which usually make walking in this type of forest not difficult.

The largest are of primary forest in the park stretches from the highest point of Gunung Honje Range to the south coast. On the Ujungkulon peninsula, roughly a third is primary forest. It covers most of the Gunung Payung Range with narrow band crossing eastward to a large oval-shaped tract in the central Talanca Plateau.Peucang Island also has a fine, although unusually spacious example while on Panaitan Island it is isolated to the slopes of Gunung Raksa.

The tallest of the trees in Ujungkulon’s forest include the fan palm gebang, the bengang and the salam which can grow beyond the high canopy species to heights of 40 meters.

Just beneath them the large trees such as bayur, gadog and in the Gunung Honje region the putat, all of which may grow to 35 meters with under-stories at 20 to 30 meters beneath the closed canopy.

Of these trees, the salam, bayur and putat are the ones which have the largest plank buttresses flowing from their trunks to the soil.

SECONDARY FOREST

The young secondary forest lies between the primary forest and the coast, occupying most of the Ujung kulon Peninsula, Panaitan Island and the lower slopes of the Gunung Honje Range. The density of vegetation can make this type of forest impenetrable and jungle-like in places.

A common trees of the secondary forest is the bungur. This tree produces a spectacular purple display and its prolific flowering around October to November is believed by the local people to indicate the beginning of the rainy season.

Most of the bamboo species found in Indonesia are not truly native but this does not apply to the two pre-dominant species in Ujungkulon. The bamboo cangkeuteuk favours steep slopes and river banks while the bamboo haur likes the wet soil of the uplands. The impressive giant bamboo, used in furniture making, is not common in the park and tends to be associated with former cultivation sites.

COASTAL FOREST

The most outstanding trees of the coast include the pagoda-shaped katapang and the robust nyamplung which has bunches of bright green fruit resembling large marbles.

The sands are often scattered with the magnificent white-petal flower of the broad, low-branched butun tree. These flowers are as large as an opened hand and hold numerous pink tipped stamens which exude a strong, rich perfume. They drop to the ground in the early morning where they are raided by pollen collecting wasp before rapidly wilting.

Hibiscus-like flower of waru laut change in color from bright lemon to deep brownish pink and are also widely found on the sea shore.

Of the coastal vegetation the most distinctive is the giant pandanus. Its notable features are large reddish pineapple-shaped fruit and a network of tripod-like supporting roots emerging from the trunk some meters above the ground. Large stands of pandanus are found along the south coast of ujungkulon.

The coconut palms, although not numerous, are believed to have been mostly planted by people rather than washed up by the sea and often indicate the sites of earlier cultivation in the park.

Beneath the canopy species of the shore are stretches of tarum, a shrubby lupin-like tree with yellow flowers and long thin pods behind which shelters the white spidery-flowered bakung lily, used by local people as fishing lures. While twining across the sands from the verges of the forest are the bright pink flowering convolvulus.

The mangrove forests of Ujungkulon are mainly situated along the shore of Welcome Bay and their root system can vary in appearance. Some are stilt-like, as found in the surprisingly attractive mangrove lined rivers of the Cihandeuleum and Cikabembem. Another species has root poking above the mud allowing them to breathe at low tide and these can be seen south of Tamanjaya. Yet, another has tendril-like roots hanging from lower branches.

The mangrove’s fruit and seed system also have special adaptations such as seeding that germinate while still attached to the parent tree allowing them to quickly take root once they drop. Their seeds come in while a wide variety of shapes and size and being buoyant can drift in water for weeks.

Mangrove forests support a wide range of other life form including marine life and are one of the most productive of all the natural environments that the bounteous rain forests contribute to our planet.

Back Ground

In earlier centuries when the population was small and the forests were large, the people of the land lived with deep respect for the forest and its wildlife. Then began a two-century long struggle between humankind and nature.

The world first became aware of the natural treasures of Ujungkulon in the 1820’s when botanist began venturing onto the peninsula to collect exotic tropical specimens. This was a time of colonial expansion and exploration and by the middle of the century; expeditions from the organization for Scientific Research in the Netherlands Indies drew attention to its unusual richness and scientific importance.

They wrote of the Peucang Island area in 1853:

“Beautiful and safe bays… fertile soil… a wealth of timber for ship and shore… a splendid situation for commerce… the seed for a new Singapore.”

Despite their recommendation to exploit the park’s resources, and fortunately for the future generations, nothing came of developing the region. Thirty years later in August 1883, nature intervened with a force that was unknown at that time when the nearby volcanic island of Krakatau erupted. It produced tidal waves that devastated the coastal areas destroying much of Ujungkulon’s vegetation and northern coastlines.

Some insight into the impact of the tidal waves was recorded by a British ship 222 km south of Ujungkulon on that day:

“Encountered carcasses of animals including even those of tigers and about 150 human corpses…. beside enormous trunks of trees borne along by the current.”

However, the re-growth was rapid and created lush new vegetation on which the browsing wildlife thrived. The first step toward the region becoming a national park began at the end of 19th century when the Ujungkulong peninsula was establishing a reputation as a big game hunting area. During the following decade, there was no other region in all Java with as much game and so the trophy shooters came and animals were killed without limitations.

A group of conservationists and game hunters became concerned about the declining animal numbers and that some species were nearing extermination. This led in 1910 to the government’s first decree protecting some of the fauna, however the hunting continued.

Two years later, came the formation of the Netherlands Indies Society for the Protection of Nature. Their efforts had very little effect until 1921 when the society granted 300 sq. kilometres of the Ujung kulon Peninsula as a nature reserve.Panaitan Island was also protected as a separated reserve.There was however no supervision and during the 1930’s hunting parties shot numerous animals.

The Park's 120,551 hectares are divided into 76,214 ha of land and 44,337 ha of surrounding reefs and sea. It can roughly be separated into three areas:

   1. The triangular shaped Ujung Kulon PeninsulaThe Gunung Honje

   2. Range to the east of the peninsula's isthmus

   3. The island of Panaitan to the north west

The highest points in the park are the 620 metre Gunung Honje, the Gunung Payung Range peaks of up to 500 metres and  Panaitan Island 's Gunung Raksa at 320 metres. In the central section of the Peninsula is a large region of wilderness known as the Telanca Plateau which reaches 140 metres above sea level, however most consist of low rolling terrain seldom morre that 50 metres above sea-level.

Surrounded by unusually warm warters, seldom varying from between 29o to 30o C. The coastlines of the park are moulded by the sea around them, battered by thee Indian Ocean, the long, sandy beaches of the south coast are backed by dunes, lagoons and forest broken by rocky outcrops - a wild and windswept shoreline.  

GEOLOGY

The events that led to the formation of the land we know as Ujung Kulon began about 200 million years ago when what is now the Indian continent broke away from the super-continent of Goandwanaland. It collided with the Asian continent creating huge ripples acrross the earth's crust forming the snow-claad Himalayas along with Sumatra's mountaain rarnge, Bukit Barisan.

It is believed that the Ujung Kulon Peninsula and the Gunung Honje raange were at that time the southern end off the Bukit Barisan Range as Java and Sumatra were connected by a land-bridge. Then 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, the land-bridge collapsed to eventually form the Sunda Straits about 9,500 years ago.

However the period when the Straits was fformed is somewhat contradicted by aan intriguing account in an early Javanese chroniclee The Book of Kings. It states that in thee year 416 A.D. the mountain Kapi (Krakatau) "burst into pieces aand sunk into the deepest of the earth' and the seas flooded the land from Gunung Gede near Bogor to the mountain Raja Basa in southern Sumatraa. The chronicle concludes:- "After the waters subsided the mountain Kapi and the surrounding land becaame sea and the island  of java was divided into two parts".

It is curious fact that no sea straits between Sumatra and Java wa known before the 1100's by the far-ranging Chinese and Arabian traders and later European explorers.

Beneath the mountains and forest  of Ujung Kulon, carved by the thousand of centuries of rain, wind and sea, are the foundations of the land - a young mountain system formed over the older strata of the Sunda Shelf.

Geoligacally, the Ujung Kulon Peninsula, Gunung Honje and PAnaitan Island are al part of this young Tertiary mountain system whilee the central part of Ujung Kulon is of older limestone formations wwhich have been covered by alluvial deposits in the north aand sand-stone in the south.

Much of the underlying rocks and early soils of the park are covered by volcanic ash, in places up to 1 metre deep, a legacy from the Krakatau erruptions.

The mountain ranges were all formed by the same folding event in the Mioocene period creating beneath the forest of the Gunung Honje Range an eastward tilting mountain block.

A reminder of this activity is a geological fault line situated off the Tamanjaya coastline. It bisects the park beneath the isthmus as it passes through the Sunda Straits connecting the volcanic island of Krakatau to a major tectonic fault line to the south of Indonesia