Chocolate and lipstick – two unexpected “forest products”

Wong, Sin Yeng (2022) Chocolate and lipstick – two unexpected “forest products”. IBEC Bulletin, 3 (3). pp. 9-15. ISSN 2716-6422

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Abstract

The diversity of produce furnished by Sarawak’s forests is astonishing – wild durians and native mangoes and rambutans, rattans and timber, fungi of many types, sundry resins, latexes, gums, and dyes from a wide range of plants, delicious sugars from a variety of palms and honey from stinging and stingless bees (and with these the potential of fermentation and distillation to make tuak and langkau), and all manner of shoots, roots, and fruits that add savour and interest to an enormous number local dishes, with numerous of these cooked inside sections of bamboo gathered from the jungle, or steamed wrapped in forest leaves. Although, naturally, there are ‘seasons’ for certain things, the sheer diversity of Sarawak’s forests coupled with practically year-round rainfall means that produce seasonality, a feature of monsoonal or temperate forests, is largely unknown. In short, there is a constant availability of almost all produce types.

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