Local Flora

The plants you paddle past

Lombok's name has nothing to do with chillies, whatever the Indonesian dictionary suggests — but the island does grow almost everything else. Here is what is flowering along the shoreline, under the water and up the hill.

Why it looks like this

A wet side and a dry side

Rinjani splits the island's weather in two. The north and west catch the rain and grow dense, green and fast. The south-west peninsula where we paddle is in the rain shadow — drier, scrubbier, and browner by October.

That means the flora changes dramatically over a forty-minute drive. Around Sekotong you get salt-tolerant beach plants, dry monsoon scrub and cashew. Head north and inside two hours you are in wet montane forest hung with moss and epiphytic orchids.

The shoreline

Beach and dune plants

These are the ones you land the kayak next to. They are all built for the same problem: salt, wind, glare and sand that will not hold water.

Tapak kuda

Beach morning glory

Ipomoea pes-caprae

The purple trumpet flower running in long runners across open sand above the tideline. The Indonesian name means “horse's hoof”, after the shape of the leaf. It is the first plant to colonise a bare beach and the reason the dune stays put.

Pandan laut

Screwpine

Pandanus tectorius

Spiky, strap-leaved and propped up on stilt roots, with a fruit that looks like a small pineapple. It is the shade at the back of most of the beaches we land on, and the leaves are woven into mats and roofing.

Gelang laut

Sea purslane

Sesuvium portulacastrum

Low, fleshy, red-stemmed mats with small pink flowers, right at the edge of where salt water reaches. Edible, salty, and surprisingly good in a salad if you have the nerve.

Rumput angin

Beach spinifex

Spinifex littoreus

Grey-green tussock grass with seed heads that break off and roll along the beach in the wind. Another sand-binder, and the plant that makes the low dunes on the south coast possible.

Katang-katang

Beach sunflower

Wollastonia biflora

Sprawling yellow daisy that fills the gap between the morning glory and the first shrubs. Flowers year-round and is usually covered in butterflies by mid-morning.

Bakung laut

Beach spider lily

Crinum asiaticum

Big strap leaves and a spidery white flower that opens at night and smells extraordinary. Grows in clumps just behind the beach. All parts are toxic — admire, do not chew.

Under the hull

Seagrass, and why it matters

Between the beach and the coral there is usually a wide band of what looks like underwater lawn. That is seagrass, and it is doing more work than anything else in the bay.

Tape seagrass

Enhalus acoroides

The big one — long ribbon leaves up to a metre, growing in soft mud and sand. It is the main food of green turtles and the reason you meet them in the shallows.

Turtlegrass relatives

Thalassia hemprichii

Shorter, blade-like and denser. Forms the meadows that juvenile reef fish shelter in before they are big enough to risk life on the coral.

Why we ask you not to stand

Seagrass stabilises sediment, keeps the water clear over the coral, and stores carbon at a rate that embarrasses most forests. It also takes years to recover from a scar. Float, do not trample.

Villages and gardens

The flowers you will see everywhere

Kamboja

Frangipani

Plumeria spp.

The white-and-yellow flower on every temple wall and hotel path, with a scent that gets stronger after dark. In Balinese Hindu practice it is a temple offering flower — you will see it tucked behind ears and laid on shrines.

Bunga kertas

Bougainvillea

Bougainvillea spp.

Magenta, orange and white, spilling over every wall in Sekotong. The colourful part is not the flower but modified leaves — hence the local name, “paper flower”.

Kembang sepatu

Hibiscus

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis

Big scarlet trumpets in hedges along village lanes. The Indonesian name translates as “shoe flower”, from an old use of the crushed petals as shoe polish.

Melati putih

Arabian jasmine

Jasminum sambac

One of Indonesia's three national flowers and central to weddings across the archipelago. Small, white, and out of all proportion in scent to its size. Grown in half the front yards on the island.

Anggrek bulan

Moon orchid

Phalaenopsis amabilis

The national “flower of charm”. Wild epiphytic orchids grow on trees in the wetter forest north and east; the ones in pots outside houses are usually nursery stock.

Teratai & seroja

Lotus and water lily

Nelumbo & Nymphaea

Filling the temple tanks at Narmada and Lingsar. Lotus stands clear of the water on a stalk; water lily floats flat on the surface. Both open in the morning and close through the afternoon.

Up the volcano

Rinjani's high flora

Javanese edelweiss

Anaphalis javanica

The papery white “everlasting flower” of the high slopes, above the tree line. It is protected — picking it is illegal in the national park, and it is a genuine problem on the trekking routes. Photograph it and leave it standing.

Montane epiphytes

Orchidaceae, ferns, mosses

Between roughly 1,200 and 2,000 metres the forest is hung with tree ferns, mosses and epiphytic orchids feeding on mist rather than soil. This is a completely different island from the one you launched the kayak on.

Alang-alang grass

Imperata cylindrica

The tall silver-headed grass covering cleared hillsides. Fire-adapted, hard to shift, and traditionally cut for thatching Sasak roofs — including the ones at Sade.

Spice and crop gardens

Zingiber, Curcuma, Capsicum

Ginger, turmeric, galangal, lemongrass and chilli grow in kitchen gardens everywhere. Higher up the slopes it turns to coffee, cloves, vanilla and cacao under shade trees.

Good to know

Questions we get asked

Does “Lombok” really mean chilli?

Lombok is the Javanese word for chilli, which makes for a good story, but the island's name is generally traced to the Sasak word Lomboq, meaning “straight”. Chillies do grow well here regardless, and the local cooking makes full use of them.

When is the best time for flowers?

The end of the wet season, roughly February to April, is when everything is greenest and most is in flower. By September and October the south-west peninsula has gone brown and dusty, though frangipani, bougainvillea and hibiscus flower right through.

Is anything here dangerous to touch?

Very little, but be sensible. Beach spider lily and oleander are toxic if eaten, and some coastal figs and euphorbias have a milky sap that irritates skin. The bigger risk on a beach walk is standing on something in the water, not brushing a plant.

Can I take seeds or cuttings home?

Please do not. Australia and most other countries prohibit importing plant material without a permit, and taking anything at all out of Rinjani National Park is illegal.

Keep exploring

See it from the water

Our guides know the local names for most of this, and are happy to stop the kayak while you look at a plant.

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