Bloodwood

Oli & Fiona at work

Oli has found herself a new hobby this school holiday. She is into woodwork. She has been working on a piece of wood which came from the Bloodwood tree. Sometimes she gets help from friends like Claudi and Fiona who drop by on Saturdays when they feel like being creative.

Art piece taking shape

The filing and sand papering soon resulted in a rather creative sculpture. The sculpture is given a name "Rooting for the Sky".

This particular sculpture actually came from an old dead root of the tree commonly known as Blood wood. The scientific name is Haematoxylum campechiana. We have an ancient tree in the Garden and probably due to its age, this tree is not in a healthy state.
Leaves from Bloodwood tree

This tree is native to Brazil and some other parts of South America. A red/purple dye can be obtained from this tree. When Oli washed the wood dust off her hands under the running tap, the water turned purplish. Once we collected the purplish water in a container and left it to stand for a while, the purplish water turned red. This is probably how the tree got its name Bloodwood - the red reminding one of blood.

Purple-stained paper

"Blood" - purplish water turned red

Green Jelly - the cincau shrub

A friend gave me a recipe he learned from an Indonesian helper. It sounded like another version of the local dessert grassjelly or "cincau". The local cincau we see in the supermarkets or wet markets, apparently, is made from the herbaceous plant Mesona chinensis.

My friend's recipe uses leaves from the Indonesian cincau shrub, Premna pyramidata which we have a small bush in the Garden.

Today after breakfast, my fourteen-year old Oli and I decided to try out the recipe. We took took some leaves from the plant, crushed them by hands and then strained the crushed mixture through a muslin cloth. Olie, the photographer, was also busily snapping away. She is a pretty good multi-tasker! We left the resulting green liquid in the fridge to set.

The set jelly looked unusual and tasted like "chorophyll" or "grass". Either way, it was a bit of a disappointment. But then I had a brainwave - sweeten the jelly with honey, the same way we eat "Gui Ling Kau" - it worked!

This plant, Premna pyramidata, is a sprawling shrub. It is easy to grow as it roots from stem cuttings and the plant needs minimum care and attention.

Business potential - a new dessert in the making? Maybe.....