This was the only oil they knew besides the occasional lard they got from hunting. Whilst writing the scientific name of any species, you need to keep a note of the fact that the first letter of the genus name is always written in its capital form, while the first letter of species name or species descriptor is never started with a capital letter―not even if it is derived from a proper noun. After processing the oil, they will sell it in bamboo tubes at the tamu. Pictures by: Asmar Hassan & Azahari Mohd Yusoff. They led me to the kampong and showed me the older fruits put out to dry on their yard. Light Red Meranti, Engkabang, False Ilipe Nut. S. macrophylla is one of four known species of the Red Meranti bearing illipe nuts; which yields fat similar to cocoa butter. My mother was a good provider while my father worked as a timber logger in Indonesia.”. Robert Entalai told thesundaypost: “My great grandparents made minyak engkabang from the few engkabang trees they found on their newly-settled area in Ulu Limbang in the 1920s.”. Many still remember the times they collected engkabang fruits and trapped the fish, known for their succulent flesh, together with their parents and grandparents. 52109 Kepong, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. I hope the younger generation will continue collecting engkabang to make oil. Malaysia, Asia, Australia, Borneo, China, Indonesia, SE Asia, Weed Potential. If they belonged to me, I would make sure they are protected for future generations,” Robert said with a faraway look. “The nuts are soft and you can eat them with rice and some tempoyak or fermented durian paste. A prolific writer and blogger, Mahmud Yussop of Bintulu, has written about how much he loves eating rice with engkabang butter. This is a medium sized to large tree with a known record of 5 m tall and 4m girth in Brunei. This lowland tree is one of the fastest growing species of the genus. He said while growing up in Ulu Limbang, he loved the taste of this “special tree butter” which added flavour to his plate of rice. THE engkabang or shorea macrophylla is a Borneo dipterocarp species, locally known as kawang, engkabang, jantong, kawang jantang and tengkawang hantelok. The meal is happiness in itself.”. In the 2000s, Sarawak registered erratic prices of the dried fruits and in 2013, engkabang was 0.80 cents per kg. These codes are universal and are periodically updated by consensus. Picture by Azahari MY. If available other names are mentioned here. But today, the number of engkabang trees has dwindled due to logging. It can grow to more than 50m tall with a 4m-5m girth. My grandfather’s engkabang trees near Lubok Lellang can fetch a lot of money but many of them are now found on the property transferred to my uncle. Engkabang trees have been secretly felled and stolen by outside foragers, according to the locals. “The oIder Ibans have the pitan for crushing the seeds to funnel the oil into a bamboo tube. Taxonomists have established several “codes” for scientific nomenclature. Right plant wrong place. The motor launches, plying between Kapit and Kanowit, would be over-laden with huge gunny sacks of engkabang fruits as red-scarfed wharf labourers waited anxiously for their arrivals with four-wheel pull carts at the ready. A Miri businessman who used to live with his grandparents in Lanang Road, Sibu, remembers a retail shop called Chop Ching Chiong, renting his grandfather’s jetty with a big floating platform for drying engkabang seeds. The wings of engkabang fruit enable germination by wind. When there was a bumper harvest, the Ulu Limbang Ibans would take their crops to Limbang town to sell to middlemen. Boiling engkabang seeds on the longhouse compound. “I have a ravenous liking for rice with illipe-nut-butter. Engkabang oil is extracted with a crude oil-press called pitan. Family : Malpighiaceae. Forest Research Institute Malaysia, They are gifts from our jungles.”. While driving on the off-road, I saw the women walking home with baskets of engkabang fruits. Senarai nama biasa dan nama sains (Saintifik) pokok:- ... Engkabang Asu ---- Shorea palembanica Engkabang Bukit ---- Shorea pinanga Synonym : Malpighia argentea . Villagers sorting out a bumper harvest of engabang seeds. Nanta was then only a teenager but he was lucky his uncle came along and took the gunny sack of engkabang from the longboat to the Nanga Medamit shop where the towkay weighed the seeds and found the weight to be 100 katis.