New York Botanical Garden Press

Springer
Transition from Native Forest Rubbers to Hevea brasiliensis (Euphorbiaceae) among Tribal
Smallholders in Borneo
Author(s): Michael R. Dove
Source: Economic Botany, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1994), pp. 382-396
Published by: Springer on behalf of New York Botanical Garden Press
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TRANSITION FROM NATIVE FOREST RUBBERS TO

HEVEA BRAsILIENSIS (EUPHORBIACEAE) AMONG
TRIBAL SMALLHOLDERS IN BORNEO'
MICHAEL R. DOVE

Dove, Michael R. (East-WestCenter,Honolulu,HA 96848). TRANSmONFROMNATIVEFOREsT

RUBBERSTO HEVEA BRASILIENSISAMONGTRIBAL SMALLHOLDERSIN BoRNEo. EconomicBotany
48(4):382-396. 1994. This is a study of the historictransitionin SoutheastAsia, in particular
Borneo,from the exploitationof nativeforest rubbersto Para rubber(Hevea brasiliensis,Euphorbiaceae).Duringthe second half of the nineteenthcentury,boominginternationalmarkets
subjectedforest rubbersto more intensiveand competitiveexploitation.At the same time, the
settlementpatternsof tribalrubbergathererswerebecomingmoresedentaryand theiragriculture
more intensive.Hevea spp. was bettersuited to these changed circumstancesthan the native
forest rubbers,largelybecauseit was cultivatednot naturallygrown. The status of Hevea spp.
in SoutheastAsia as a cultigen,as opposedto a naturalforestproduct,and thepolitical-economic
implicationsof this helps to explain the contrastinghistoriesof smallholderrubberproducersin
the New and Old Worlds.Thisstudyoffersan historicalperspectiveon currentdebatesregarding
relationsbetweenforest resources,forest peoples,and the state.
PERALiAN KARET HUTAN ALAw MENJADI PERKEBUNANKARET RAKYAT OLEH/DALAM PETANI-

Penelitianini mempelajarisejarahperalihandi Asia Tenggara,

PETANISUKUDI KALIMANTAN.
khususnyaKalimantan,dari eksploitasikaret hutan menjadipenanaman karet Para (Hevea
brasiliensis, Euphorbiaceae).Selama pertengahankeduaabad ke sembilanbelas,melonjaknya
pasar internasionalmenyebabkankarethutandi eksploitasilebih intensifdan kompetitifPada
saat yang sama, pola pemukimanpemulung-pemulungkarethutan menjadilebih menetapdan
sistem pertanianmerekamenjadilebih intensif Penanaman Hevea spp. lebihsesuai terhadap
peralihan ini dibandingdengan karet hutan, terutama karena Hevea spp. tersebutditanam
bukantumbuhsecara alami. Status Hevea spp. di Asia Tenggarasebagaisuatu tanamanyang
diusahakan(kultigen)yang berlawanandenganpohon hutanalam, dan akibatekonomi-politik
untukini, menerangkanperbandingansejarahpengelolahanHevea spp. di Asia dan Amerika
Selatan. Penelitian ini juga memberikansuatu pandangan sejarahpada perdebatansaat ini
tentanghubungansumberdayahutan, suku terasingyang hidupdi dalam hutan, dan kebijaksanaan pemerintah.
Key Words:
Asia.

rubber/latex; jelutong; non-timber forest products; Dayak; Kalimantan; Southeast

The adoption early in the twentieth century of

Para rubber [Hevea brasiliensis (Willd. ex Adr.
de Juss.) Muell.-Arg.] by the interior, tribal peoples of Indonesia is one of the century's signal
examples of spontaneous diffusion and adoption
of technological innovation in agriculture. It has
been called "one of the most remarkable periods
of development in the history of agriculture" (Allen and Donnithorne 1957, cited in Geertz 1963:
1 13). Whereas estates held a commanding share
of Indonesia's rubber production during the in-

' Received 7 May 1993; accepted 14 June 1994.

dustry's early years in the second decade of the

twentieth century, smallholders have gained
ground ever since and now-with 2.6 million
hectares held by over 1 million householdsthey are responsible for three-fourths of total
production (CPIS 1993:3; Government of Indonesia 1992:230-232). This success is all the
more notable because it occurred among people
who have been labeled as resistant to innovation
and development by both colonial and post-colonial governments, and because these governments did nothing to support this adoption and
a great deal to hinder it. Why was rubber adopted
with such alacrity and against such odds? Part

Economic Botany 48(4) pp. 382-396. 1994

? 1994, by The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY 10458 U.S.A.

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1994]

383

DOVE:RUBBER AMONG BORNEOSMALLHOLDERS

of the answer involves the complementarity of

rubber with swidden agriculture, which I have
analyzed in a separate study (Dove 1993a); but
the rest of the answer, and my concern here, lies
in the historical antecedents of rubber and the
political-economic context of the transition from
them to rubber.
Most analysts of the development of smallholder cultivation of rubber (and other export
crops) look to comparatively recent historical
events for its explanation. For example, Booth
(1988:205) attributed this development to the
expansion of Indonesia's trade with Europe (before which, she concluded, the land and labor
involved must have been "under-utilized").
Cramb (1988:107) suggested that the development of cash-cropping in Sarawak was stimulated by the exhaustion of primary forest at the turn
of the century, leading to inadequate swidden
harvests. Dillon (1985:116) argued that the development of smallholder rubber cultivation in
tandem with rice cultivation was due to the widespread abundance of land in Indonesia at the turn
of the century. A shortcoming common to all of
these analyses is that they assume commodity
production was without precedent in the tribal
and peasant economies that adopted it. In fact
there was a precedent: the gathering of natural
forest latexes, which was one element in a tradition of trade in non-timber forest products that
is of great antiquity in Southeast Asia and was
an important factor in the development of its
societies.
I suggest that Hevea spp. was adopted so readily in Indonesia because it filled a niche that previously was filled by the native forest rubbers
(Fig. 1). The forest rubbers were subjected to
great pressure during the second half of the nineteenth century, when booming international
markets brought new players and more intensive
systems of exploitation to bear on them. At the
same time, the gradual evolution of the tribal
rubber gatherers toward more sedentary settlement patterns and more intensive agriculture was
transforming the niche into which the forest rubbers had formerly fitted. Hevea spp. suited the
transformed niche better than the forest rubbers,
and it was protected against some of the pressures
being applied to the forest rubber resource.
Whereas the forest rubbers were associated with
a mobile settlement pattern, Hevea spp. was better associated with a sedentary pattern; and, of
great importance, whereas the forest rubbers grew

Species: Native II* Exotic

Exploitation:Gathering ll* Planting
Control: European Il* Dayak
Getah
Terminology: Gutta
"'.

Fig. 1. The transition from native forest rubbers

to Hevea spp.

naturally, Hevea spp. (an exotic) had to be planted. The act of planting greatly strengthened the
position of tribal rubber producers vis-a-vis the
state, during a period when the focus of contest
was shifting from inter-tribal to tribal-state. This
study offers an historical perspective on current
debates regarding the development of non-timber forest products, and relations between forest
resources, forest peoples, and the state.
The data upon which this analysis is based
were gathered during several periods of research
in West and South Kalimantan, which included
an extended stay with the Kantu', an Ibanicspeaking tribe of swidden agriculturalists. Hevea
spp. is one of the Kantu's major sources of cash
or tradable commodities.

HISTORY
TRIBAL TRADE

The once-widespread idea that monetary relations are foreign to traditional, tribal societies
is increasingly questioned today, with the linkage
of tribal peoples to broader capitalist relations
of production and exchange increasingly seen as
the rule rather than the exception (Parry and
Bloch 1989). As Padoch and Vayda (1983:311)
wrote some time ago, "A long-standing and active involvement in trade is not at all atypical
among the supposedly isolated and self-sufficient
groups of the world's humid tropics." In Southeast Asia, as in most parts of the humid tropics,
this involvement historically focused on nontimber forest products. Although merchants, local
courts, and international trading powers all played
key roles in trade of these products, the initial
gathering was usually done by forest-dwelling
tribesmen. This was a key role, with critical implications for the development of both the trade
and the tribesmen themselves. As Cleary and
Eaton (1992:59-60) wrote, "To conceptualize the
important jungle trade as an unsophisticated and
anachronistic part of the 'traditional' economy
is both misleading

and inaccurate

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...

the trade

384

[VOL.48

ECONOMICBOTANY

was economically and socially sophisticated, as

well as being ecologically balanced."
Failure to note the existence and importance
of this trade has led to misunderstandings of the
societies involved. For example, Kahn (1984:
317-318) has argued that the trade in forest products was so important to historic Minangkabau
society in Sumatra that the threat to it-by forest
closures under the colonial Dutch governmentcontributed to the communist uprising of 1927.
Kahn suggested that ignorance of the importance
of this trade has contributed to misinterpretation
of the effects of the forest closures and the causes
of the uprising. The same ignorance has led to
misunderstanding of traditional Iban society and
economy in Sarawak. Sahlins (1 972:224-226) argued that economic exchange in Iban society was
"balanced" rather than "generalized" due to the
need to accumulate rice for external trade. Sherman (1990:287) critiqued this thesis based, in
part, on the fact that Sahlins ignored the Iban
trade in forest products, which may have even
eclipsed in importance their trade in rice.
Ignorance of the historic trade in forest products has contributed, in particular, to misunderstanding regarding the nature of swidden agriculture. An example is the well-described seminomadic settlement pattern of the Iban (but see
Padoch 1982), which has most often been explained in terms of demand for new forest within
the swidden system. However, the contemporary
Kantu' (e.g.) say that their ancestors first explored and settled their present territory in West
Kalimantan not in search of fresh swidden territory but in search of forest rubber for trade.
Without knowledge of this trade, it is difficult to
explain all the variation in the swidden system.
This is especially true regarding the impact on it
of intensified cultivation of commodities (such
as Hevea spp.). Even the most astute analysts
(e.g., Pelzer 1945:24-25; Wolf 1982:330) have
suggested that production of export commodities
(like rubber and tobacco) under colonial rule must
have been inherently "disturbing" to the traditional swidden cycle. In fact, tribal communities
in Borneo were involved in the production of
commodities for the international market,
through their gathering of forest products, well
before the introduction of the more familiar
colonial commodities of rubber, tobacco, coffee,
and so on. Indeed, their traditional economies
were structured not just to tolerate but profit
from the combination of subsistence-oriented

swidden cultivation and trade-oriented commodity production. (Failure to appreciate the

linkage between trade and swidden cultivation
undermines analysis of Bornean societies to this
day [also noted by Cramb 1993:213-214].)
FOREST PRODUCT TRADE

Recent work on non-timber forest products

has suggested that their potential economic value
is much greater than had been thought (e.g.: Dixon, Roditi, and Silverman 199 1; Peters, Gentry,
and Mendelsohn 1989), and that the importance
and historical depth of their trade are correspondingly great. Trade in forest products has an
especially long history in Southeast Asia, with
early records of it (between western Indonesia
and China) dating from the fifth century (Wolters
1967), if not considerably earlier (von HeineGeldern 1945). A major category of forest products throughout this history has been plant "exudates," including gums, resins (intra-regional
trade in which may date back to Neolithic times
[Dunn 1975:120-137]), and latexes. The latexes
gathered in Borneo have been divided, within
the trade, into three categories.
The first is caoutchouc, "India rubber," or simply "rubber." The French term caoutchouc (in
Spanish caucho) was derived from a native Peruvian expression for "weeping wood"; whereas
the term India rubber stemmed from the discovery in 1770 that the product could be used
to "rub" out pencil marks, with "India" referring
to its customary sale through London's East Indian merchants (Coates 1987:7, 20-21; Corominas and Pascual 1980,1:927; Imbs 1977,5:130).
Caoutchouc first referred to any New World forest rubber. Eventually it came to refer chiefly to
rubber from Hevea spp. in South America and
Ficus elastica Roxb. (Moraceae) in Southeast Asia
and, in Borneo, Willughbeia spp. (Apocynaceae)
(Burkill 1962,2:2300-2304; Purseglove 1968:
146-147). Caoutchouc has been known to Europe since the mid-sixteenth century. Trade in
it-which initially focused on erasers, clothing,
footwear, medical syringes, and bottles-dates
from the second half of the eighteenth century
(Coates 1987).
The second category of forest rubber is gutta
percha, which refers largely to latex from trees
of the family Sapotaceae, especially the genera
Palaquium (in particular P. gutta (Hook.) Burck),
whose native habitat ranges from India to the
Central Pacific, and Pavena, which ranges from

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1994]

DOVE:RUBBERAMONG BORNEOSMALLHOLDERS

Burma to New Guinea (Burkill 1962,2:

1651,1708). Its use as an adhesive and as caulking for sailing vessels earned gutta percha a role
in the region's ancient trade with China (Hoffman 1988:108). It was known in Europe by the
mid-seventeenth century, but large-scale trade in
it dates from the 1840s and the discovery that
its extreme nonconductivity of electricity suited
it for use in insulating marine telegraph cables,
among other purposes (Eaton 1952:53-54).
The final category is jelutong, or guttajelutong,
referring largely to latex from trees of the genus
Dyera (Apocynaceae), in particular D. costulata
(Miq.) Hook.f., which are native to Malaysia and
Indonesia (Burkill 1962,1:889-890; Eaton 1952:
63). Jelutong initially was considered an inferior
variety of gutta percha (cf. Hose and McDougall
1912,1:151). It enjoyed a boom during the first
decade of the twentieth century, following the
discovery that it could be used in manufacturing
fire-resistant plates and tiles. Jelutong became
distinguished in its own right with the discovery
in 1922 that it could be used as a substitute for
Mexican chicle [from Manilkara achras (Mill.)
Fosberg] in chewing gum, supplies of which fell
short of demand during the prohibition era in
the United States (Burkill 1962,1:891; Eaton
1952:62). (Gutta percha and jelutong are still
traded today, although not in volumes approaching historic levels [de Beer and McDermott 1989:
40; Safran and Godoy 1993:296; West Kalimantan Provincial Planning Office, personal communication from director].)
The change in the market for jelutong, when
it was gathered as a chicle substitute as opposed
to an inferior gutta, demonstrates the contingent
nature of the term "forest product": although the
botanical sources remain the same, the trade
products taken from them may vary considerably. Thus, the native sources of latex were not
necessarily first valued for latex. Many latex-producing trees produce good timber, and timber,
not latex, was the basis for the most widespread
tree names (Burkill 1962,2:1654). Many of the
latex-yielding trees and vines also produce valued edible fruits and other products (Bock 1881:
204; Roth 1896;2:244). (Hose and McDougall
[1912,1:151] suggested that attraction to the fruit
alone caused some Bornean tribesmen to contribute both intentionally and unintentionally to
the spread of some of the native rubbers.) Burkill
(1962,2:1655) suggested that the aboriginal Jakun of peninsular Malaysia were familiar with the

385

biogeography of gutta percha trees because, before the gutta percha boom, they had exploited
them for their fatty edible seeds. There was a
minor trade in the oil from these seeds long before the market for the latex developed (Burkill
1962,2:166 1). All trade uses likely are predated
by subsistence uses: the use of forest rubber for
making handgrips for tools (Burkill 1962,2:1652)
and for caulking and sealing (e.g., of canoes [cf.
Jessup and Vayda 1988:16]) is of great antiquity
in the region.
"DOMESTICATION"OF FORESTPRODUCTS
This history of gathering forest rubbers facilitated the adoption of Hevea spp. by the forest
dwellers of the region (just as the historic trade
in native rubbers in South and Southeast Asia
helped to stimulate the initial decision by the
colonial powers to try to transplant Hevea spp.
to the region in the first place [cf. Wolf and Wolf
1936:152]). As Dunn (1975:86) wrote (cf. Gianno 1986:3-4; Rambo 1982:282):
For centuriesthe ancestorsof the modernTemuan
presumablycollected gums, oils, and resins from
foresttrees,usingfor at leastsome of theseresources
bark slicing techniquesnot unlike those employed
in modern rubber tapping ... Hevea rubber, requiring similar techniquesand simple technology,
has thereforesimply replacedtraditionalgum and
resin collectingin the Temuan economy.
An indigenous perception of this historic linkage
is reflected in language: the Kantu' and other
Bornean tribesmen (as well as Malays) call Hevea
spp. getah, instead of the Malay/Indonesian/
Javanese term karet (Home 1974:259; Richards
1981:105; Wilkinson 1959 1:363). Getah is the
Malay/Indonesian term for tree sap (Wilkinson
1959,1:363-364). This was the source of the Anglo/Dutch trade term gutta percha (percha "strip"
refers to the sheets of processed latex [Wilkinson
1959,2:885]), which was applied to some of the
most important native rubbers. The Kantu' and
other tribes did not, however, use the term gutta
(or gutta percha) for the native rubbers: they used
terms from their own languages (e.g., jangkang
for Palaquium spp. among the Kantu' [cf. Richards 1981:123]), as might be expected for goods
of economic importance and long history. The
lack of local economic history obliged them to
use the trade term getah/gutta for the non-native
IIevea spp.
The linkage between the cultivation of Hevea

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386

ECONOMIC BOTANY

spp. and the earlier gathering of wild rubbers is

one of "domestication": a trade based on gathering wild (or at least mostly wild) rubber became
a trade based on cultivating rubber (albeit not of
the same species). A similar process of domestication took place with a number of other forest
products. One salient example is the native tallow-yielding illipe nut tree (Isoptera borneensis),
which has now been planted in some parts of
Borneo for at least 150 years (Sather 1990:2728). Another example is rattan, which grows naturally in the forests of Borneo and has been gathered and traded for centuries. During the second
half of the nineteenth century and first half of
the twentieth, rattan began to be planted in parts
of Kalimantan (Godoy and Feaw 1989; Tsing
1984:247). Today it is cultivated (mostly in East
and South Kalimantan) in swidden fallows, like
rubber (Lindblad 1988:59-60; Peluso 1983;
Weinstock 1983).
The involvement in commodity production
that resulted from this process of domestication
was one step in an evolutionary process; it was
not a "clean break" with the past. Belief in a
clean break (critiqued by Ellen [1985:559] with
reference to timber exploitation) led to the false
inference that the first rubber smallholders
learned the trade from colonial planters. In fact,
European planters were proceeding as much by
trial-and-error as tribal smallholders in the initial
years of rubber cultivation, and some of the most
important lessons -such as the ill-effects of cleanweeding-passed
from tribesman to colonial
planter, not the reverse. Missen (1972:214) wrote:

[VOL. 48

ing it and, in the former case, tapping with a

technique and level of intensity that was sustainable or not. Some variation in techniques is
accounted for by variation in botanical characteristics from one latex source to another, but
much is not. For example, Bock (1881:152) described the tapping of gutta percha trees in Borneo:
With two sharp strokesof a mandaua deep notch
was cut in the bark, from which the juice slowly
oozed, forming a milky-looking mucilage, which
graduallyhardenedand became darkerin colour as
it ran down the tree. The native collectorsof guttaperchamake a trackthroughthe forest,nickingthe
trees in two or three places as they go, and collect
the hardenedsap on their returna few days afterwards.
Hornaday (1885:433) described the felling ofgutta trees for the same purpose:
The native found a gutta tree, about ten inches in
diameter,and aftercuttingit down,he ringedit neatly all the way along the stem, at intervalsof a yard
or less. Underneatheach ring he put a calabashto
catch the milk-whitesap which slowly exuded.

Colonial observers charged native rubber

gatherers with exploiting this discretionary element (viz., to tap vs. fell) to the disadvantage of
the resource, by favoring less sustainable methods of exploitation for the sake of short-term
gains (Brummeler 1883; Burbidge 1880:74-76;
van Romburgh 1897; te Wechel 1911). The Norwegian naturalist Bock (1881:204), commissioned by the Dutch colonial government to surTo see the estatesin this role [of teacher]underplays
vey
southeastern Borneo, wrote;
the commercial motivation and awarenessof the
indigenouscultivator . . . It seems far more approThe Dyaks have not yet graduatedin the science of
priateto view the late nineteenthand earlytwentieth
forest conservation.Insteadof making incisions at
centurychangesamong OuterIslandpeasantsas the
regularintervalsin the barkof a tree,and extracting
continuationof a long-termprocess ratherthan as
a portion of the juice at differentperiods,by which
somethingmotivationallynew.
its furthergrowthwould not be prevented,they usually adopt the radicalexpedientof cuttingthe whole
To understand this process of continuation, it is
tree down.
necessary to understand the forces that were at
work in the system of natural rubber exploitation
Fyfe (1949:26) came to a similar conclusion reat the time that Hevea spp. first appeared.
garding exploitation of gutta percha in the Malay
Peninsula:
HISTORIC SYSTEM OF
LATEX-GATHERING
The tree has to be tapped at short intervals along
the
whole stem and even out on the branches,an
RESOURCEUSE, ABUSE, AND
operation of some difficultyrequiringmuch effort
GOVERNMENT POLICY
by the tapper.As a resultthe guttacollectorconfined
An important variable in exploitating the nahimselfto the simplestmethodof obtainingthe latex
tive forest latexes was the means by which latex
which is to fell the tree and bleed it at numerous
was obtained: tapping the living tree versus fellpoints along the stem and main branches.
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1994]

DOVE: RUBBERAMONG BORNEOSMALLHOLDERS

It was feared that such methods would lead to

the extermination of the resource: Burbidge
(1880:74) wrote (regarding Borneo), "The rubberyielding willughbeias are gradually, but none the
less surely, being exterminated by the collectors," while Bock (1881:204) wrote, "The consequence is that the material is becoming more
and more difficult to procure, and will eventually
become scarce, if not extinct, in the island." Such
fears were the ostensible basis for government
intervention, but close scrutiny suggests that other factors were involved.
The boom in jelutong (e.g.) in the first decade
of the twentieth century triggered progressively
tighter and more discriminating control of this
resource by colonial authorities (Drijber 1912;
Lindblad 1988:18-19; Potter 1988:130-134). By
1908 the Dutch colonial government in parts of
Kalimantan required a license to tap the trees;
in 1910 the government awarded all tapping rights
to foreign concessionaires (as also was done in
Sarawak [Reece 1988:28-29]); and in 1913 the
government imposed export levies on native tappers. The government justified these measures
in terms of the need to avoid overexploitation
of the trees or to protect the smallholders against
middlemen. But some observers argued that the
regulatory measures would not solve the problem
and might even exacerbate it (CAPD 1982:3540;
te Wechel 1911); and others insisted that the real
motivation for intervention was European profit
at the expense of native rights. Van Vollenhoven
called it an egregious example of the colonial
government's abuse of its right to "wastelands"
(Potter 1988:134).
Colonial efforts to control the exploitation of
jelutong and other forest rubbers fit a recurring
pattern (which subsequently applied to colonialera Hevea spp. as well [Dove 1993b]). In colonial
(and postcolonial) Borneo, whenever a natural
resource experienced a commercial boom and
attracted the attention of government and industry, steps were taken - ostensibly for the common good but often out of self-interest of the
political-economic establishment-to restrict its
exploitation by local smallholders. The result has
typically been destructive of both the resource
(Brookfield et al. 1990) and the socioeconomy in
which it was traditionally exploited.
Government criticism of felling versus tapping
was ironic: the colonial structure that critiqued
the overexploitation of forest rubbers was itself
responsible-through its stimulation of tradefor the increased pressure on rubber production.

387

This pressure did not necessitate unsustainable

exploitation but it favored it. Gutta percha trees
yielded 1-3 pounds of latex by tapping (viz., on
one occasion) versus 10 pounds by felling (Burkill 1962,2:1664; cf. Eaton 1952:49). In the competitive environment of a colonial-era commodity boom, the motivation to tap a tree for a small
yield and leave it standing, in the hope of enjoying more small tappings in the future, paled
against the risk that someone else would fell the
tree in the interim for a large, one-time yield.
This risk was heightened when native rights to
forest rubber trees were ignored during boom
times when, as the example of jelutong illustrates, colonial governments imposed on the resource progressively stricter and more biased
proprietary systems of their own. This imposition left the native tappers with increasingly little
incentive for sustainable exploitation.
RESOURCEUSE, MOBILITY,AND SECURITY
The emergence of a robust European market
for forest rubbers, with its attendant emphasis
on exploitation for short-term profit, had important implications for historic patterns of population movement and settlement. Exploitation
of latex-producing trees in a nonsustainable
manner, with the consequent need to always seek
out new and unexploited stands, promoted a pioneering pattern of latex-related movement and
exploitation. A pattern developed of mounting
gathering expeditions that lasted months or even
years and sometimes extended beyond Borneo
to Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula (Burkill
1962,2:1656; Gomes 1911:234-235). The association of extended travel with gathering rubber
and other forest products came to be so strong
that such gathering was used as a pretext with
colonial authorities to disguise migration into
areas off-limits to settlement (Pringle 1970:281).
A number of observers have suggested that gathering native rubbers and other forest products
was the genesis of the renowned Iban custom of
bejalai "expedition" (Lian 1988:118; Padoch
1982:25,109)-an
intriguing material interpretation of this much-discussed cultural trait.
Rubber-gathering also had an impact on the
relocation of populations. Richards (1981:106)
suggested that (the above-mentioned pretext
aside) expeditions to gather forest rubbers usually preceded migration. That is, if during an
expedition a location was discovered that offered
large stands of forest rubbers and also met the
other requirements of settlement, the group would

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388

ECONOMICBOTANY

relocate there. The contemporary Kantu' say that

their ancestors first explored their present territory when searching for jangkang (Palaquium
spp. [cf. Richards 1981:123]) and kubal (Willughbeia spp. [cf. Howell and Bailey 1900:811).
This is not to suggest that forest rubber-related
movement necessarily dictated forest swiddenrelated movement-or the reverse. Just as the
pattern of movement necessitated by unsustainable exploitation of forest rubbers favors a pioneering pattern of swidden agriculture, so does
the latter favor-or, perhaps more correctly, permit-a pioneering and unsustainable pattern of
rubber exploitation. (A linkage between swidden
and gathering patterns also is suggested by the
fact that the group most known for pioneering
swidden cultivation in Borneo, the Iban, also was
known for gathering forest products [BaringGould and Bampfylde 1909:25, 375; Hose and
McDougall 1912,1:150; Pringle 1970:267]. This
interpretation is supported by the fact that the
other group known for collecting forest products,
the Penan, were not agriculturalists at all but fulltime hunters-and-gatherers [Hoffman 1988].)
The long-distance travel necessitated by
rubber-gathering was associated with some physical risk, which is reflected in the attendant ritual.
Lumholtz (1920,1:124-125), for example, described a remarkable /4 meter-high rubber statue
from southeast Borneo representing a rhinoceros
with a man on its back, which was offered to the
spirits in return for a successful rubber-gathering
expedition. The selection of the rhinoceros (Didermocerus sumatrensis) is apt, since it inhabited
(due to hunting pressure, if not natural preference
[Medway 1977:144-1451) the most remote and
unfrequented parts of Borneo-the same sort of
areas the rubber collectors had to penetrate to
find unmolested trees. In the ceremony observed
by Lumholtz (1920,1:124-125), a feast was held
in honor of the statue and then the rhinoceros
was "killed." This, again, is an apt symbol: as
the largest and thus potentially most threatening
animal in Borneo, the rhinoceros symbolized the
hazards of travel in the uninhabited Bornean interior-although there were other hazards as well.
There was an historical association between
gathering forest rubber and head-hunting. This
is reflected in the contemporary Iban/Kantu' language, in which jangkang means gutta percha or
a bunch of trophy heads (Richards 1981:123)both of which are obtained on expeditions into

[VOL.48

the forest. Some observers have interpreted this

association to mean that there was competition
for scarce forest products (Lian 1988:119; Vayda
196 1:354-355). Others have suggested that gathering rubber and other forest products was not
per se the cause of warfare, but the travel and
migration that it required was (e.g., Baring-Gould
and Bampfylde 1909:376). Hose and McDougall
(1912,1:150,185) wrote, "In the course of such
excursions [to gather forest products] they [the
Iban] not infrequently penetrate into the regions
inhabited by other tribes, and many troubles have
had their origin in the truculent behaviour of
such parties." It is suggestive that the subject of
Hose and McDougall's outrage, the Iban, whose
reputation for gathering rubber and other forest
products has been mentioned, also were renowned for their involvement in head-hunting.
Pringle (1970:21) wrote, "Stories about headhunting may have slandered other pagan groups
. . ." but the Iban lived up to the reputation (cf.
Vayda 1976:48).
In the case just cited by Hose and McDougall,
the tribesmen who go on gathering expeditions
take heads as opposed to losing them. Adult men
go on such expeditions, while the young, the old,
and the women remain behind. These age and
gender differences favor the tribesmen on an expedition over the inhabitants of any community
they chance across. This was not true, however,
when the gathering was done by non-tribesmen.
Bock (1881:118) described gathering by coastal
Malays as follows:
Whencollectinggutta,the Malaystakea two or three
days'journeyinto the forest.For fearof being murderedby the Dayaks,they go in parties,fromtwenty
to thirty, for mutual protection,and very often accompaniedor joined by friendlyDyaks.
This pattern is very different from that described
for the Iban and other Dayak. In addition to
being much briefer and (therefore) involving
much shorter distances, it is associated with a
defensive as opposed to offensive military posture.
RESOURCEUSE, ETHNICITY,AND
SUSTAINABILITY
There was no "generic" gatherer of forest rubbers or pattern of gathering. Rather, there were
a variety of participants and patterns, varying in
part as the role of the rubbers-and rubber col-

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1994]

DOVE: RUBBER AMONG BORNEO SMALLHOLDERS

TABLE 1.

389

DIFFERENT MODES OF FOREST PRODUCT GATHERING.

Collector

Tribal hunter-gatherer
(Hunter-gatherer/swidden agriculturalist)
Tribal swidden agriculturalist
Malay peasant
Corporate interests

lectors-fluctuated in broader political-economic contexts. The earliest gatherers of forest rubber

were forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers (who may
have been familiar with the latex-yielding trees
for products other than latex and for subsistence
uses rather than trade): these are the Penan (or
Punan) of Borneo and the orang asli "original
people" of the Malay Peninsula. In the peninsula,
mid-nineteenth century collection of gutta percha was carried out by at least one of these aboriginal groups, the Jakun (Burkill 1962,2:1655).
At that time, the tribal agriculturalists of Borneo,
the Dayak, were said to be ignorant of the product. Low (1848:5 1) wrote, ". . . Gutta percha has
been found in Borneo, and ... the natives ...

know at present nothing of the manner of collecting it, or of its uses. . ." This situation changed

quickly as a result of the then-boom in the gutta

percha trade. A quarter century after Low's observations, Dayak tribesmen were being employed by merchants in the Malay peninsula specifically for gathering gutta percha (Burkill 1962,2:
1656; Dunn 1975:109).
The Dayak offered something that the native
tribesmen of the peninsula did not: an intensive,
pioneering system of extraction (and a political
economy that made this possible). (The peninsula had no equivalent-neither in its small population of hunters-and-gatherers nor in its large,
peasantized Malay population-to the populous,
often aggressive, agriculturally based tribal peoples of Borneo.) This suggestion is supported by
the fact that within Borneo, colonial British authorities gave privileged status in collection to
the most mobile and aggressive of all of the Dayak groups, the Iban (Pringle 1970:267). In the
later stages of market booms, however even the
Dayak could not exploit the forest rubbers as
intensively as the colonial markets demanded.
At these times coastal Malays did most of the
gathering, not the interior tribesmen (Potter 1988:
131-133; cf. Hudson 1967:66). The tribesmen

Market condition

Intensity

Impact on
resource

Low

Normal

Low
-

Medium
High
High

Normal/boom
Boom
Boom

Medium
High
High

were not willing to wholly relinquish their swidden cultivation of food crops to concentrate on
rubber-gathering; the more peasantized Malays
were.
Some Dayak tribesmen managed to participate in the forest product trade, while maintaining their sedentary agricultural lifestyle, by developing partnerships with the Penan (cf.
Guerreiro 1988:30-31; Hoffman 1988:103-104),
the forest product "specialists" of Borneo. Penan
participation was probably central to the gathering of most forest products except when, as
above, boom times made it economical for other
groups to devote more time to gathering than
they otherwise could afford.
Sustainability of forest rubber exploitation
varied with these different modes of production
(this variation is presented in simplified fashion
in Table 1). It was probably most sustainable
when carried out by any one of the native huntergatherers (cf. Dunn 1975:109), as just one among
many activities, during normal market times. It
might have become less sustainable with the participation of sedentary swidden agriculturalists,
and it clearly became unsustainable with the
participation of full-time peasant (and also corporate) collectors-who
employed felling or
slaughter tapping-during booin times.
THE TRANSITION
DETERMINANTS:TECHNOLOGICAL,
ECONOMIC, ECOLOGICAL, TENURIAL

The historic exploitation of indigenous latexproducing trees and vines resembled in many
respects the subsequently introduced system of
rubber cultivation. For example, the labor requirements of both systems are relatively low
(Cramb 1988:112). In addition, there are relatively few constraints in either case on the timing
of labor inputs. Forest rubbers can be gathered
at short notice in response to fluctuation in either

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390

ECONOMIC BOTANY

market prices or subsistence crop harvests, with

minimal capital investment or risk-taking-as is
also the case with tapping Hevea spp. (The opposite conclusion is sometimes reached [cf. Lindblad 1988:115] by incorrectly focusing on the
time that it takes to grow a rubber tree-8-10
years-instead of the time that it takes to bring
a dormant tree back into production- 2-4 days.)
The Iban of Sarawak in recent history still gathered forest rubbers (and other products) to make
up for crop failures (Freeman 1970:264). These
similarities facilitated the adoption of rubber,
but this would not have occurred with the speed
and magnitude it did if there were not also significant differences.
The most obvious difference lies in the productive capacity of the plants involved, for example in the concentration of marketable latex
in the tree exudate. The balance between latex
and resins is 80/20 in Hevea spp., but it is the
reverse, just 20/80, in the Dyera spp. sources of
jelutong (Burkill 1962,1:891). Assuming that
production costs are approximately equal, the
economic return of Hevea spp. would be four
times as great as with jelutong (Burkill 1962,1:
896). The advantage of Hevea spp. is even greater
when differences in frequency of tapping are taken
into account: though Hevea spp. should be tapped
just once every two days to achieve maximum
latex flows (Barlow 1978:146), the comparable
rule-of-thumb for standing, wild gutta percha
trees was just once every two years (Fyfe 1949:
27)-a difference in incidence of 365: 1!
Other differences between Hevea spp. and the
native forest latexes involve complementarity
with swidden cultivation, in particular the central act of the swidden cycle, clearing the forest.
Whereas the native rubbers are at risk whenever
the natural forest is cleared, it is cleared forest
in which Hevea spp. is planted (its seedlings are
planted in newly-cleared swiddens). As the habitat of the native rubbers is destroyed, therefore,
the "habitat" of Hevea spp. is created. (This habitat is not natural forest but it does "mimic" a
forest succession [Geertz 1963:113; Gouyon, de
Foresta, and Levang 1993].) The creation of this
habitat also was promoted by changes in patterns
of agriculture and settlement over the past century. As a result of demographic and political
constraints, both swidden agriculture and settlement patterns have become more sedentary,
which favors Hevea spp. Whereas the supply of
forest rubber close to a given settlement is po-

[VOL. 48

tentially exhaustible (especially if the trees are

felled or slaughter-tapped), the productivity of a
Hevea spp. grove is potentially open-ended (since
naturally grown saplings can succeed trees that
pass their maturity). The sustainability of Hevea
spp. cultivation permits sedentariness, the unsustainability of forest rubber exploitation does
not; and although sedentariness is inimical to the
continued exploitation of natural forest rubbers,
it is essential to the exploitation of Hevea spp.
(The causal direction here is two-way: patterns
of settlement both affect and are affected by patterns of resource exploitation.)
This past century has seen not only the sedentarization but also the intensification of swidden
cultivation, which again favors Hevea spp. over
the forest rubbers. Swidden cultivation has been
increasingly concentrated in secondary forest and
swampland, which-with the added requirement
of weeding and (in swampland) transplantingrequires higher and more frequent labor inputs
(Dove 1985:377-381). This labor schedule is
better complemented by the timing of economic
inputs and returns in the exploitation of Hevea
spp. than the native forest rubbers. Whereas
gathering in the forest necessitates the absence
of the tribesmen from the village and thus swiddens for weeks and months at a time, Hevea spp.
can be tapped while they remain in the village
and continue to work in the swiddens.
A final difference between Hevea spp. and the
native rubbers involves tenure. The native forest
rubbers were subsumed under a traditional system of tree tenure. Under traditional Kantu' law,
the first person to tap a tree has the exclusive
right to further tapping (cf. Lian [1988:118] on
the Kenyah). This right lapsed if the person ceased
tapping long enough for the tapping scars to heal
or moved out of the area. This tenurial principle
is tailored to a sedentary, sustainable system of
exploitation. It was not suited to boom markets
and state intervention, as the progressive loss of
local rights during the boom in jelutong showed.
Even today, individually claimed forest rubber
trees are cut down with impunity by outsiders,
as is evident from this December 1989 newspaper report of the destruction of jelutong and
other trees (cited in Down to Earth 1990:10):
A loggingcompanyidentifiedonly as PT SBK with
a concession in KotawaringinTimur district, Central Kalimantan is suspected of cutting down
thousandsof tengkawang[Isopteraspp. and Shorea

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1994]

DOVE:RUBBER AMONG BORNEOSMALLHOLDERS

391

spp.],pantung[Dyeraspp.] and maja [unidentified] a standing Hevea spp. tree is undeniable evitreeswhich had providedlocal peoplewith a source dence of planting and thus tenure, but a standing
of income.
native rubber tree is not: any claim that one of
the latter was planted can be countered with the
The publication of this incident in an Indo- claim that it was naturally grown. This is one of
nesian newspaper, with a tone sympathetic to the the principal reasons why the tribesmen who exlocal rights-holders, suggests that the wider world ploited the native forest rubbers "domesticated"
is more observant of these traditional rights than not them but an exotic rubber, Hevea spp., init used to be; but recognition of proprietary rights stead.
generally is, and was, reserved for planted trees.
CONSEQUENCES:
RITUAL, POLITICAL
The planting of commercially valued perennials
The shift from forest rubbers to Hevea spp.
like rubber is recognized under both national and
tribal law as establishing rights both to the trees represented the replacement not just of one tree
and the land under them (Weinstock and Vergara with another, but of one mode-of-production with
1987:318-319). Although planting rubber (or another. Some of the attendant, wide-ranging
other economic trees) enhances tenurial security, consequences are reflected in the changes in ritit does not completely guarantee it. This is il- ual that occurred as a result. Thus, although bird
lustrated by another, not-atypical story in the augury is associated with both gathering native
Indonesian press, which tells of the clearing of rubbers and producing Hevea spp., there is a dif100 hectares of rubber smallholdings to make ference: as the earlier-described "rubber rhinocway for a government estate project (cited in eros" indicated, ritual in forest rubber producDown to Earth 1990:3). Even in the way that the tion focused on the hazards of traveling to gather
state destroys rubber trees, however, their su- the rubber (Gomes 1911:234-235), whereas ritperior tenurial character is evident: whereas the ual in Hevea spp. production focuses on the hazcolonial state could simply take forest rubber ards of trading the product (Sandin 1980:
trees from local claimants, the contemporary state 107,112,113,1 15,122). (Market prices for rubber
must fell a Hevea spp. tree and plants its own are volatile and represent the greatest source of
rubber tree (or other perennial) in its stead, to uncertainty in rubber cultivation.) The focus in
overcome local proprietary rights.
the first case is on the physical dangers of the
It is notable that the Dayak did not attempt tribal world, whereas the focus in the second case
the obverse of the state's strategem, namely, is on the economic dangers of the outside world.
clearing the forest rubber trees and then re-plant- This shift from "physical" to "fiscal" hazards
ing the same species. That is, the Dayak did not reflects the consequences of a transition from a
choose to reforest their fallowed swiddens with mode-of-production based on collection to one
native rubbers instead of Hevea spp. This deci- based on cultivation.
sion was not a function of botanical constraints:
The consequences of this transition were rea colonial observer noted that the Bornean source flected in the extraordinary panic that swept Borof caoutchouc ( Willughbeia spp.) "may be easily neo in the 1930s, based on a rumor that the spirit
and rapidly increased by vegetative as well as of the Hevea spp. was "eating" the spirit of the
seminal modes of propagation" (Burbidge 1880: swidden rice, and resulting in mass fellings of
74); and there are records of estate plantings of rubber trees (Dove n.d.; Freeman 1970:268;
both gutta percha (Fyfe 1949:26) and jelutong Geddes 1954:97). This panic reflected anxiety
(cf. van Wijk [ 1941 ] cited in CAPD [ 1982:1344]).
about the impact that Hevea spp. cultivation
The Dayak did some planting-the Kantu' (e.g.) might have on the traditional cultivation of swidsay that their ancestors planted some of the na- den rice. It can be interpreted as a caution against
tive rubber trees, in particular Palaquium spp., overinvolvement in commodity production.
the major source of gutta percha-but these ef- Hudson wrote (1 967:31 1):
forts pale by comparison with the effort evenMost villagersfeel thatthe rubbermarketis a chancy
tually devoted to Hevea spp. Although there may
thing.Worlddemandvariesand pricesfluctuate.No
be other reasons for this (e.g., differences in proone of them wantsto be totallydependenton factors
ductivity), one of the principal reasons involves
over which they have no control. Thus ... rubber
the implications for domestication and, accordcultivationwill continuein the foreseeablefutureas
ingly, tenure in the eyes of the state. In Borneo,
an activity ancillaryto swidden farming.

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392

ECONOMICBOTANY

[VOL.48

fact were used to protect the inefficient European

estates from the highly competitive smallholders, by means of fixed estate/smallholder ratios,
planting restrictions, and special export taxes
(ranging up to, and beyond, 2000 percent) on
smallholder production alone (Bauer 1948:1 42n;
Thee 1977:27-28). Until the past decade the only
attention that smallholders in Indonesia have received from the government has been punitive
in nature; all technical, material, and regulatory
support has been directed to the estate sector. By
the 1980s, a scant 8 percent of Indonesian smallholders were participating in government programs to improve productivity (Booth 1988:217),
despite which the smallholders have still managed to dominate production.
The relative success of the smallholders in this
Now all is changedgreatpeace and quiet
unequal
contest is attested to by the name they
The sharp-edgedswordbecomes the tapper'sknife.
use
for
Hevea
spp.: getah, the source of the coThe carved shield becomes a swing
Whereinis wrappedin clothesthe babewhose future lonial term gutta for forest rubbers. The adoption
of this term reflects a changing of roles between
lies
native rubbers and Hevea spp., and between EuIn the price of rubbertapped in a ring.
ropean planters and native smallholders (Fig. 1).
Hevea spp. became associated with a decline in It signifies that what the native rubbers were for
warfare because involvement in its cultivation is the Europeans, Hevea spp. became for the tribesinimical to waging war. The permanence of rubber men. A fundamental transformation of the pogardens impedes the tactical mobility of the tribe, litical economy of rubber production in Southand the solitariness of the rubber tapper makes east Asia took place, based on critical differences
defense impossible. Moreover, although men did between the native rubbers and Hevea spp. Almost of the historic gathering of forest rubbers, though tribal collectors could not control exwomen today do most of the tapping of Hevea ploitation of native forest rubbers, tribal tappers
spp. Down to the present day, rubber-tapping is could control exploitation of Hevea spp. The cothe activity that suffers most (viz., that is aban- lonial planters' use of "forest rubber" as a term
doned) when rumors of marauding penyamun of disparagement for tribal Hevea spp. (Gouyon,
"head-hunters" sweep through the interior of de Foresta, and Levang 1993:182; Lindblad 1988:
66) is, from this perspective, doubly ironic. First,
Borneo.
Contemporary, sedentary tappers of Hevea spp. it unwittingly points to the historic basis for the
are vulnerable to roving bandits and rebels (and smallholders' successful adoption of Hevea spp.
the rumor of them), just as local communities Second, it invokes as a term of disparagement
were formerly vulnerable to roving gatherers of the commodity that the colonial establishment
forest rubber. This transition reflects a move away successfully controlled (forest rubber), in referfrom the type of political-economic formation in ence to the commodity that it failed to control
which tribal warfare had a role to play. Head- (Hevea spp.).
hunting was the quintessential tribal activity, and
CONCLUSIONS
its abandonment-occasioned,
in part, by the
adoption of Hevea spp. reflects a re-orientation
The adoption of Hevea spp. in Borneo repreof the primary axis of contest from inter-tribal sented not the adoption of trade but rather the
to tribal-state.
adaptation of a long-standing trade-in forest
The developing contest with the state was re- products-to a changing political-economic conflected in how quickly the colonial governments' text. The course of agricultural development here
initial support for smallholder rubber cultivation was not just a contest between society and nature,
turned to rabid opposition. The international nor between society and its own problems (e.g.,
rubber regulation agreements of the 1920s and population/resource pressure), but between dif1930s, ostensibly designed to stabilize prices, in ferent sectors of society (viz., a state and its com-

Most Bornean tribesmen did not overcommit to

rubber cultivation but maintained it as an "ancillary" activity, which has enabled them to survive historic market cycles of boom and bust far
better than the estate sector.
Rubber posed a threat not just to the rice spirits. The shift from mobile gathering to sedentary
tapping entailed a shift from a more aggressive,
military posture to a more vulnerable, defensive
one. Since its introduction, Hevea spp. has been
associated with the disengagement from tribal
warfare. A civil servant in Sarawak wrote that
the 1911-1912 rubber boom "banished all
thoughts of tribal warfare and head-hunting"
(Ward 1966:145), a change summed up by a
colonial poet as follows (Anonymous 1925):

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1994]

393

DOVE:RUBBER AMONG BORNEOSMALLHOLDERS

mercial elite on the one hand, and tribesmen

living at the state's periphery on the other).
This contest was, in part, a conceptual one: its
object was to model the resource landscape in a
manner favorable to one's own rights, categories,
and interests (cf. Dove 1992). Domestication
proved to be a powerful tool in this contest. It
gave local communities greater leverage vis-avis broader political-economic structures by
shifting their activities, along the publicly perceived nature-culture continuum, further from
nature and closer to culture. This shift enabled
the tribesmen to fend off external appropriation
of the imported Hevea spp. more effectively than
with their own native rubbers.
This history shows that development of trade
in non-timber forest products does not, by itself,
guarantee an increased flow of benefits to local
communities (and it may even threaten extant
flows [Corry 1993; Hanson 1992]), contra current belief that such development is an absolute
good. It took a long-term indigenous effort, which
benefitted from a colonial planning process (the
importation of Hevea spp.) in effect gone awry,
to establish local, native control of rubber production in Borneo.
The differing outcome of competition over the
native rubbers and Hevea spp. shows that the
intensification of relations between local communities and the global economic system is complex, takes many possible shapes, and has many
possible outcomes. The current tendency to view
histories of "incorporation" into the world economy as unvarying does an injustice to the varying
dynamics of local systems, as well as the global
system itself.
Dutch development of the forest product trade
in what is today the Indonesian portion of Borneo has been characterized as follows:
On the one hand,the Dutchwerereleasingthem [the
interior Dayak tribesmen]from some of their old
insecurities,but, on the other,the Dutchwereopeningup theircountryto new tradersinjungleproduce,
and pressingthem to become involved with them.
The enticement of working regularlyfor the new
traderorganizations,and their seductively reliable
credit, was not easy to resist. A colonial role was
being worked out even for them ...

(Black 1985:

291)
Although it is important to link rubber gatherers
and tappers to the wider, global processes of which
they are part (cf. Kahn 1982:15), it also is important to recognize that the linkage involved

more than the global system impacting on the

local system. The latter half of the nineteenth
and first half of the twentieth centuries saw not
just more involvement in the world economy by
the tribal communities in Borneo, but involvement of a different order. In response to the
broader political-economic structures exerting
increasing control over commodity production,
the tribesmen developed new production systems, like Hevea spp. cultivation, that maximized the strengths of the local system-e.g., a
subsistence agricultural base-and exploited the
weaknesses of the global system-e.g., greater
recognition of proprietary rights to planted trees.
There was much more to this process, therefore,
than the "working out of a colonial role" for the
native producers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I initially carried out research in Borneo for two years (1974-1976)
with support from the National Science Foundation (Grant #GS-42605).
I gathered additional data during six years of subsequent work based in
Indonesia (1979-1985), with support from the Rockefeller and Ford
Foundations and the Program on Environment of the East-West Center.
The current analysis was written with the assistance of fellowships from
the East-West Center's Programs on Environment and Population and
a grant from the John P. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. An
earlier version of the paper was read at the XVII Pacific Science Congress
in Honolulu, May 1991. The author is grateful to Helen Takeuchi and
Daniel Bauer for assistance with editing and graphics, to Phyllis Tabusa
and Marilyn M. Li for assistance with literature searches, to Marlinus
Pandutama for assistance with Indonesian translation, and to two anonymous reviewers for Economic Botany for very useful comments on an
earlier draft. None of the afore-mentioned people or organizations necessarily agrees with the analysis presented here, for which the author
alone is responsible.

LITERATURE

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BOOK REVIEW
Remarkable Agaves and Cacti. Park S. Nobel. Oxford

UniversityPress,200 MadisonAvenue,New York,

NY 10016. 24 February1994. x (unnumbered)+
166 pp. (cloth) ISBN 0- 19-508414-4, $39.95; (paperback)ISBN 0-19-508415-2, $19.95.
Park S. Nobel is co-author of The Cactus Primer
(1986), a book which deservesa place on every botanist's shelf. His new book, whose title might imply it is
a coffee-tablevolume, will deservedly take its place
beside The CactusPrimer.
"Remarkablemeans worthy of notice, uncommon,
even extraordinary,"says the author, with respectto
the cacti and agaves he treats. He aptly describeshis
book as well, whose coveragerangesfrom the history
of the margarita(with tequila, of course, made from
Agavetequilana)to the efficiencyof crassulaceanacid
metabolism(CAM)versus C3 and C4 plants.
Thereareethnobotanicaldata;horticultural
tips;pleas
for conservation;essays on naturalhistory;food uses;
primerson the physiologyof roots, stems, and leaves
(the authoris afterall a plant physiologist);even a bit
of plant anatomy. Nobel is a teacher, who leads the
readergently from the surfaceto the interior, metaphoricallyas well as literally.I didn't know that cattle

in some placesarefed chopped-upOpuntiaficus-indica

mixed with approximatelyequal amounts of alfalfa
andchickenmanure!This fact,togetherwiththousands
more, makes the book worth every minute it takes to
read it.
As one expects from this press, the book is entirely
free of typos, the photographsare sharplyreproduced,
and the Latin names are correctlygiven-I thought I
hadcaughthim out in an erroron Agavecerulata(looks
like a misprintfor serrulata),but no, it is correct,from
cerula,a little piece of wax.
The book is fully referenced,the referencesgiven at
the end of eachchapter,with all titles (includingserials)
unabbreviated.Those who wish to delve more deeply
will get smiles from librariansand useful responses
from computerizedcard catalogs.
ProfessorNobel (know-bell)is picturedon page 157.
He appearsto be a very open, frank,accessiblekind
of fellow-just like his book.
NEILA. HARRIMAN
BIoLoGY DEPARTMENT
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-OSHKOSH
OSHKOSH, WI 54901

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