Showing 1 - 3 of 3
The bugs that make a meal of the garden
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 30/11/2014
» Reader Margaret McMillion sent me a picture of a pest which she said had been periodically attacking plants in her Bangkok garden. “It is most prevalent at the end of the rainy season, but it can appear at almost any time,” she wrote.
It's about blooming time!: Philippine orchid finally gets its due
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 17/03/2013
» The sampaguita (Jasminum sambak), is a flower close to the hearts of most Filipinos and now shares the designation of national flower of the Philippines with an orchid, the waling-waling (Euanthe sanderiana, also known as Vanda sanderiana). The bill was approved by the Philippine Senate last month in a move that was long overdue. Considered the "queen" of Philippine flowers, this indigenous orchid species used to be found in abundance in the dipterocarp forests of Davao, Cotabato and Zamboanga in Mindanao, southern Philippines, but is now on the brink of extinction in its natural habitat due to over-exploitation and destruction of forests.
Dragonfruit roaring across southeast asia
B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 25/11/2012
» The first dragonfruit I ever tasted came from Vietnam, brought by a Thai friend who had an import-export business there. I thought it was strange that I was eating the fruit of a cactus; until then the only cactus I knew of with an edible fruit was the prickly pear in the genus Opuntia, which I've never tasted. The dragonfruit _ Hylocereus undatus, and christened kaew mangkorn in Thai _ was much bigger, and I marvelled at its bright pinkish-red skin with green-tipped scales, and white flesh dotted by tiny edible sesame-like seeds. Eating it chilled, I couldn't quite pinpoint what it tasted like; it had a flavour all its own, which was refreshing. It was in the mid-1990s, and I remember saving some of the seeds, which readily germinated.