Plastic Wares at Cihideung Sunday Market

Plastic wares for sale at Cihideung Sunday market held on the vicinity of Graha Puspa housing complex.

Sunday market is a popular phenomenon in Indonesian cities, including Bandung. It is usually held on Sunday morning in a public area, usually a park, a field or a sport track to coincide with people going there to do Sunday morning exercise. The most popular these days are those held at Lapangan Gasibu (Gasibu Square) and the car-free day on Dago street. The one in the picture is held at Graha Puspa, a suburban upscale housing complex in the northern hills of Bandung.

Photo by Agus Wahyudi, a Bandung Daily Photo contributor.

Kembang Tahi Kotok - Tagetes, Spp

These beautiful flowers have an unpleasant name here: kembang or bunga tahi kotok (lit. chicken shit flower) because of their pungent scent. Anywhere else it's called marigolds (Mexican, French, or African, depending on the species). It is native to the southwestern United States, Mexico, and the South American regions in general and belongs to the genus of tagetes.

It is said that the pungent smell of this flower can deter some common insect pests. Hence, this kind of flower is often planted together with the main crops in tomato, eggplant, chili pepper, tobacco and potato gardens.

The marigolds grow well here. I took this photo at Cihideung flower village in the north of Bandung.

Cihideung Orchids

The Moth Orchid (phalaenopsis sp) is one of the more common (non-exotic) species of orchids cultivated and sold at Cihideung floral village in the north of Bandung.

The moth orchid is native to southeast Asia. Its native habitats spread from the Himalayan mountains in the west to the Philippines' Palawan island in the east, and from Taiwan's Ponso No Tao (the Orchid Island) down to Indonesian islands of Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku (the Mollucas), and Nusa Tenggara (Lesser Sunda Islands) in the south.



The moth orchid (phalaenopsis sp.) is one of the most cultivated and popular orchids because it is easy to grow in artificial conditions. In its native habitats, it normally thrives in warm temperatures of between 20 to 35 degrees centigrades with high humidity level (between 60 to 70 percent) and low light intensity (under shades, with about 12,000 to 20,000 lux of light).

Lotus, Nelumbo, or Water Lily?

Most of you would know what this flower is. Many would call it water lily or lotus. Some would probably call it nelumbo. So, which one is it?

Water lily is the generic name of this kind of aquatic flowering plant that has its roots in the soil submerged in a body of fresh water and whose leaves and flowers float on or above the water surface. It belongs to the family of nymphaeaceae. Lotus or nelumbo used to be traditionally classified into this family for their apparent similar characteristics. However, lotus or nelumbo is now considered to be a separate family of nelumbonaceae. Unlike the water lily which belongs to the order of nymphaeales, lotus or nelumbo belongs to the order of proteales.

Now that you know that water lily is not the same as lotus (nelumbo) in their botanical classifications, you may want to know what characterizes their differences.

The lotus or nelumbo has peltate leaves, that is its leaves are fully round with an underneath stem. Water lily's leaves, on the other hand, are notched (v-shaped) from the edge into the center of the lily pad. In addition to this, the lotus or nelumbo has a very distinctive seed pod that water lily doesn't.

Now that you know this, can you tell which flower is on the photo? Water lilly or lotus (nelumbo)?

This flowering plant is one of the hundreds of decorative plants cultivated at the village of Cihideung, Bandung.

My World: Cihideung Pink Roses

There are more than 100 species of roses, and pink roses of this kind (not too pale and not too dark) are said to be the symbol of perfect happiness, secret love, grace and sweetness, and - unfortunately also - indecisiveness.

That, I think, many of us know. But what's Cihideung?

Cihideung is the name of a flower, nay, flora village in the north of Bandung, where - quite literally - hundreds of species of flowers and plants, both local and overseas, are cultivated.

There is no information about when farmers here began to cultivate different flowers and plants, or how the flower farms began. My estimation is that farmers here began to shift from vegetable farming to flower farming in the early or mid 1970s. The shift must have taken place gradually because until the 1980s, I could still see quite a significant number of farmers cultivating vegetables, corn, cassava, and even paddy. Now with about 80 percent of the farmers here are in the flower cultivation business, Cihideung is quite arguably one of the largest flora production centers in Indonesia. In fact, according to a recent publication by the Indonesian Department of Agriculture, the name Cihideung has now become indentified as some sort of "trade mark" in the flower business here.

Here are some more pictures I took from my recent walk in this village. I will probably post some more photos of the flora and other decorative plants cultivated here at sometime later.





This post is Bandung Daily Photo's participation in this week's My World Tuesday meme and my friend M of Ramblingwood's meme of Nature Note. Please follow the links to visit other participanting blogs from around the world.