Wae Rebo has been widely known as one of the popular tourist destinations in Flores. Many travelers who visit Flores is even just spending here to combine their tour to Labuan Bajo and then they fly back to Bali or Jakarta. Some travelers visit this village as part of their trip to explore the entire island from west to east or the opposite.
The only way to access the village Wae Rebo is by your foot. After having 5 minute-ride on motorbike from Denge, the rest of the tour activity is trekking in the jungle for 5 km. The trekking starts from 500 mbl which is at Wae Lomba or marked as post 1 (from 3 posts). The highest elevation of the trail is 1.200 mbl which is at Poco Roko and the village Wae Rebo itself is located at 1.111 mbl (data from Manggarai tourism ministry). That’s why, the trail is halfway uphill and another half is relatively flat and downhill.
During your 5 km trekking, you will have full experience of being surrounded by variety of trees along the trail. You can also see from opened viewpoint at least three to four spots headed to a mountain range where you can see these magnificent lush forest.
Knowing that we have around two hours to spend before reaching for the cone shaped village Wae Rebo, it is interesting to share a bit of some plants that attract travelers and as a result, they frequently ask questions of the name of those amazing plants. So, as a tour guide, I am here to share some pictures of those plantations that you might be interested in identifying.
I am not botanist or someone who specializes in a scientific studying about plants but I am trying to figure out all the plants that I captured and identifying it by using plant identifier and of course for those of you who know better, your comments are highly accepted.
1. Bird’s nest fern (Asplenium nidus)
As it may sound, this type of fern looks very much like a perfect place for bird’s nest. This plant is also easily found on the home yard of the Flores residents especially in Ruteng where I live. This plant is also perfectly fit to the tropical area with high humidity, just as you know the humidity in Wae Rebo is between 90-100 %.
2. Spiny Tree Fern (Alsophila spinulosa)
According to wikipedia, the name of this plantation in latin is Alsophila spinulosa or also known as the flying spider-monkey tree fern, is a species of tree fern in the family Cyatheaceae. As it is further explained, this type of tree fern was estimated found in the early Jurassic when dinosaurs was still exist.
When I was walking down back to Denge with Dede, a 13 year old kid from the village Wae Rebo, they used the scaly tree to pill it out as it has a soft part inside that they can make a ball out of it for their football game.
Labe is local Manggaraian name for this plant. In Indonesian, it is also called as Benying or Ara Benying. This plant is part of Moraceae family or often called the mulberry family or fig family—are a family of flowering plants consisting of about 38 genera and over 1100 species. This plant is easily found on some areas around the rainforest in Ruteng Nature Park inside Rana Mese Lake, East Manggarai Regency.
4. Pacaya Palm (Chamaedorea tepejilote)
Pacaya Palm is easily found even when you have just started to trek to Wae Rebo. After a few minutes walk, you will find this plant not far from the trail. This plant is very popular to Flores people as it is widely used during Easter on Sunday Palm, three days before holy days on Christians’ traditions. For this purpose, some people also plant this tree on their home yard.
5. Wild banana (Musa acuminata)
This is probably the most interesting plant that I have found during the trekking to Wae Rebo. I am not sure if this is really a banana tree or other type of plant that looks similar to banana tree but fair to say it is a wild banana tree. This plant was found near a small river before the steep zone to post 2 or at around 700 mbl. The availability of water and a very fertilized soil with enough sunlight might be the reason this banana tree is found around this area that I might think this is very unusual. Monkey is probably the happiest animal to have seen this particular plant.
After spending around a week to identify these plants, I found out that there are over 5 types of fern that you can spot in the forest of Wae Rebo. This is going to be very exciting because my next trip will be very interesting one because I will try to identify specifically about this not to mention about any types of palm and ficus tree that I frequently found during the trekking. Many of the plants are from the same family but with different types or variations.
Looking forward to the next project.
Yulianus Irwan
References for this story
https://plant.id/
https://www.edenproject.com/visit/things-to-do/rainforest-biome/
Photos taken by Samsung A15
