John Tyman's Cultures in Context Series Torembi and the Sepik A Study of Village Life in New Guinea

PART ONE:  THE NATURAL SETTING Topic No. 3: Vegetation Types

015. With a climate that is always hot and frequently wet, plants grow steadily throughout the year, although individual trees may drop their leaves from time to time. By no means all the land is forested, however.

016. There are in fact four very different plant communities at Torembi; forest, grassland, swamp grassland and swamp woodland. Their distribution reflects differences in soil type and drainage; and they differ also in their usefulness to the local population.

017. The swamps are found in low-lying areas from which water drains away only slowly. Here the land is almost level and the rivers wander around all over the place.

018. The channel of the Sepik River is confined only by low muddy banks and it overflows these regularly.  In the wet season, a belt extending 10kms on either side of the river is flooded to a depth of several metres, turning the area into a vast swamp.

019. The swamp grasses shown here extend to the Sepik River in the background … its course marked by the trees which line its levee banks (because they are better drained).

020. Often only narrow channels remain open, along which fishermen push their canoes through shallow water.

021. Many small waterways and old river channels are covered by floating weeds.  The worst of these, Salvinia molesta, was introduced accidentally from South America.  It spread rapidly.  Even the Sepik was infested by it.

022. Fishermen were unable to cast their nets, and their traps were choked with weed.  Attempts by government authorities to eradicate it have met with at least some success.

023. Secondly, in slightly higher areas, where the surface does dry out a bit between rainy seasons, the swamp grasses are replaced by swampy woodland.

024. Here the dominant species is the sago palm.  Sago swamps play an important part in the life of the people here, and all villages have access to swamps like this.

025. The starch separated from the fibres in the trunks of the palms is a major foodstuff.

026. Forest, thirdly, is found in higher areas, on better soils, which are moist but not waterlogged.  With a climate favourable to plant growth year round, the trees are broad leafed and mostly evergreen, and many different species thrive here.

027. The trees grow close together with their crowns touching… so that viewed from above the forest is a green carpet of interlocking tree tops.

028. The area beneath the trees is well shaded, cool and moist.  As a result, the ground is almost bare in places, since few plants grow well in the shade.

029. Other plants, using the trees for support, climb upwards, seeking sunlight, so that woody creepers hang from many of the trees.

030. But you’ll find few tall trees near the village, since most of the area has been cut over many times, to provide the clearings used as vegetable gardens.

031. The tallest trees today are found generally in those sections of the forest which have been reserved for the use of ancestral spirits.

032. The fourth type of vegetation in the Torembi area is the grassland referred to locally as ‘kunai’. It is found in the highest areas here, roughly 20 metres above sea level, on infertile clay soils usually.

033. These soils are waterlogged during the wet season but dry out a lot when the rains ease off.  The grassland is not continuous, but is broken by lines of trees alongside streams or in gullies, where water collects after rain.

034. In other words, although the climate is hot and reasonably wet, the drier areas really have a savanna type of vegetation, in which grassy tracts alternate with lines of trees.

035. The grass is coarse, with thick blades, and is of limited value as pasture.

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Text, photos and recordings by John Tyman
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Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, 2010.
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