KUCHING: Fifteen students from SM Sains Kuching Utara (Sakura) Nature Society had a rewarding and well-learned experience in their inaugural educational visit to Sarawak Biodiversity Centre (SBC) recently.
Led by teacher-in-charge Lubong Mat, the group visited SBC’s herbarium centre and the plant library where they had close encounters with raditional herbs and plants of Sarawak.
The centre’s officers Hamim Hamid and Asha Devi Kaushal briefed the students on ethno-herbal plants and informed them that the centre have about 5,000 species of ethno-herbal plants leaves
from as far as Ba Kelalan which were preserved at the plant library.
They were also told that SBC’s herbarium centre had a collection of animals mostly from the limestone regions of Bau.
The learning experience continued when they saw how herbal plants were planted in cement plots according to the ethnic rituals in Sarawak.
Lubong said they were surprised to learn that these poisonous plants were used by locals to gather food and hunt animals in the past.
At the SBC nursery, they also experienced how herbal plants were propagated for research and tapped for their full usage potential.
Lubong said the educational trip to SBC was fruitful and enhanced the students’ knowledge of plants and herbs grown locally and used by Sarawak natives.