Rough garment - Specimen details
| Catalogue Number: 75938 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No Image | Plant Name | 153.05 MORACEAE Ficus natalensis | Entry Book Number | 19.1999 | |
| Artefact Name | Rough garment | Vernacular Name | |||
| Iso Country | Uganda | TDWG Region | Uganda | ||
| Parts Held | Rough garment | Geography Description | Uganda, Africa, East Tropical Africa, Mpigi District, Buganda | ||
| Uses | Rough garmentUse: MATERIALS - Fibres User: Man | TDWG use | MATERIALS - Fibres | ||
| Storage | Bottles, boxes etc | Related Items | |||
| Donor | Donor No | ||||
| Donor Date | Donor Notes | ||||
| Collector | Byarugaba D | Collector No | |||
| Collection Notes | Collection Date | 05/03/1999 | |||
| Exhibition | Expedition | ||||
| Number Components | Publication | ||||
| Notes: | Garment bought by Dominic Byarugaba (People and Plants Initiative, Africa Regional Programme) in a market for 4000 Uganda shillings. The stitching is from Raphia farinifera (Gaertn.) Hylander. This bark cloth comes from a 2m length of bark of a tree, the, lower, older and more broken part having the most stitching. Cloth of this quality is used for shrouds for bodies prior to burial. Young children who wet their beds are given blankets of this rough quality to help cure them of the habit. Finer, more p, rocessed quality cloth forms the basis of traditional attire for women of the Lake region of Uganda. Stripping of the bark starts about 30cm from the ground and continues up to the first branching (up to 3m). Processing can extend a strip of bark from 60, cm to 250cm wide. The trees are stripped of bark every 6-8 months. The best time to do this is in the wet seasons (a short one, from March-April and a longer wet one from September to November) when the bark recovers quickest. To prevent desiccation an, d fungal attack, banana leaves are wrapped round the stripped portions for 6 to 8 days (in wet season and dry seasons, respectively). Trees can be stripped of bark in this fashion up to 30 times. Ficus natalensis is increasingly planted in agroforestry s, ystems as a cover crop for banana and coffee, and a source of bark. A video is currently being produced by Dominic Byarugaba and Tony Cunningham showing the processing of Ficus natalensis bark cloth. This example was donated to the Economic Botany Collec, tions on 21 April, 1999 in Paris at the annual meeting of the People and Plants Initiative (WWF/UNESCO/RBG, Kew). | ||||
| Determinations: | 153.05 MORACEAE Ficus natalensis (Hochst.) 187.00 PALMAE Raphia farinifera (Gaertn.) Hylander | ||||