Desert plants – a tonic for the nation?

Perhaps I’d led a sheltered life but I had never seen a tube of Miswak-flavoured toothpaste before I came to the UAE. When I first saw a tube in the supermarket, a closer look revealed that Miswak was actually Salvadora persica, a shaggy, rather untidy shrub that I’d seen growing in abundance along the desert roads between Abu Dhabi and Al Ain. The idea of using toothpaste made from the landscape was too intriguing to resist and I immediately popped a tube into my shopping trolley to take home and try.

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, this was my first introduction to the important role that plants play not only in traditional Arab medicine but also in Islam as a whole. The use of chewed and softened roots and stems as toothbrushes, or siwak as they are known in Arabic, actually predates Islam but in using siwak, Muslims are able to follow the example of the Prophet Mohammed who was, according to the Hadith, a firm supporter of its use. The extent to which the use of siwak became associated with the Prophet can be seen in the traditional Algerian name siwak al-Nabi, or ‘siwak of the Prophet’, for the tree from which it was harvested and the efficacy of Salvadora persica in traditional medicine has been supported by recent research which showed that the plant has significant analgesic, anti-inflammatory and blood clotting properties.

Traditional Arab and Islamic medicine (TAIM) has long been recognised alongside Chinese, Ayurvedic and Western herbalism as one of the world’s four great medical traditions and a recent rise in the popularity of herbal remedies, coupled with increased environmental awareness, has seen renewed efforts to protect and research plants whose potential therapeutic value is yet to be fully understood. An official announcement is expected at the forthcoming Liwa Date Festival establishing an Emirate-wide seed bank to help protect Abu Dhabi’s flora from habitat destruction and climate change. One of the key functions of the seed bank will be to provide research material that will allow researchers to establish the medicinal properties of native species. Meanwhile, the Zayed Complex for Herbal Research and Traditional Medicine has been working with the World Health Organisation for several years and has recently published scientific research detailing the therapeutic potential of species including Neurada procumbens, Calligonum comosum, Portulaca oleraceae and even the commercial date palm, Phoenix dactylifera.

There is a traditional Arabic saying that there are as many uses for the date palm as there days in the year. The palm has been cultivated for millennia and the nutritional value of its fruits have long been understood as a rich source of carbohydrates, dietary fibers, certain essential vitamins and minerals. The date seeds are also an excellent source of dietary fibre and contain considerable amounts of minerals, beneficial fats and protein however, traditional herbal medicine has also used both, as well as the palm’s gummy sap, in the treatment of everything from coughs and colds to asthma, diarrhea and even cancer. It has also been regarded as an aphrodisiac, contraceptive, laxative and diuretic. While this might all seem to good to be true, recent studies have shown that the fruits possess antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, gastric and liver-protective properties and it’s potential as an anti-viral agent has also meant that Phoenix dactylifera extract is being investigated as a possible component in experimental vaccines for HIV.

Though not as ubiquitous or recognisable as the date palm, the sidr or Zizyphus spina-Christi is one of the most commonly planted trees in the UAE and is renowned for its toughness and its ability to resist heat and drought. A tropical evergreen of Sudanese origin, Zizyphus spina-Christi has been used for its wood and as a source of food and medicine since at least the Pharaonic period in ancient Egypt. The tree is also highly respected by Muslims, being mentioned twice in the Qur’an and also being identified as the tree of the seventh heaven and the last tree, named Sidrat al-Muntaha, reached by the Prophet Mohammed when he ascended to Paradise. For this reason, some Muslims believe that it is lucky to sit under the tree while in certain parts of Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq there was an historical tradition of washing dead bodies with water in which Zizyphus leaves had been soaked because the water was believed to have the qualities of a preservative. With such an illustrious pedigree, it is perhaps not surprising that various parts of the tree have been used to treat a whole host of ailments throughout the Arab world. These range from the use of root powder as a general pain killer and treatment for toothache, arthritis and bruises, to the use of the fruit, seeds and leaves in hot drinks as a means of soothing labour pains, burns, diarrhea and stomach ache. The fruits of a closely related species, Zizyphus jujube, are also widely used in traditional Chinese and Korean medicine where they are believed to alleviate stress.

That three of the most common trees in the UAE should have effective medicinal properties may come as a surprise, but it bodes well for Abu Dhabi’s new seed bank. It is estimated that there are anywhere between 400 and 600 indigenous plant species in the UAE and if even a fraction of these were found to have therapeutic potential, it might just provide the commercial imperative needed to kick-start serious native species growing programmes. Not only would this benefit traditional medicine in the UAE, it might also provide a truly local, sustainable and distinctive palette with which to plant Abu Dhabi’s parks, gardens and public spaces, a much needed tonic for the nation.

An online copy of the Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants of the UAE V.1 can be seen here.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis

Tropical Hibiscus, China Rose, Queen of the Tropics

Hibiscus rosa-sinensis is one of the most popular of the 250 or so species that comprise the genus Hibiscus and the species alone has around 6,000 registered named cultivars and varieties. The main reason for its popularity are its brightly-coloured, eye-catching blooms, each of which only lasts a day, but a steady succession of flowers ensures near continuous colour throughout the winter months.

The tropical hibiscus can be grown as a shrub but also makes an excellent container plant. If it is grown in this way, replanting and root pruning are recommended at least every 3 years or when the plant becomes pot-bound. This Hibiscus prefers rich soil but will grow well in sand as long as it is regularly fertilised with a balanced feed.

Unfortunately, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis is susceptible to a wide variety of pests including spider mites that cause a mottled yellowing of the leaves, thrips that cause bud drop as well as white flies and fungus gnats. In early 2000, a mealy bug infestation spread throughout the region, with devastating effect, and this also affected the use and popularity of the plant.

The single form of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis with the 5-petaled blood-red blooms is Malaysia’s national flower. It is known as ‘Bunga Raya’ in the Malay language.

Lantana camara

Lantana, shrub verbena

It is strange how many of the most beguiling plants are also the most dangerous. With lantana however, the threat comes not from the plant’s deadly poisonous berries, but the fact that the Invasive Species Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists it as one of the world’s most invasive alien species of any type, alongside Japanese knotweed, the cane toad, and Dutch elm disease.

Lantana is a significant weed of which there are some 650 varieties in over 60 countries. It has established itself and spread internationally, often as a result of forest clearance for timber or agriculture. It can grow individually in clumps or as dense thickets, where it crowds out more desirable species.

In disturbed native forests it can become the dominant understorey species, disrupting succession and decreasing biodiversity and at some sites, infestations have been so persistent that they have completely stalled the regeneration of rainforest for three decades.

An undemanding plant, lantana thrives in full sun, is drought tolerant, and will even tolerate poor soils thanks to its strong root system. It propagates easily from cuttings or seed, flowers quickly, and will produce a vigorous, bushy plant that can easily reach two metres.

Nick’s Garden: plant shopping in Dubai’s ‘little Manila’

Nick Leech goes plant hunting in a vibrant neighbourhood in downtown Dubai

Pawan Singh/The National

Loud, brash and with its own vibrant street culture, Dubai’s Al Hudaiba Street runs between Satwa’s central car park and bus station, and the Iranian Hospital on Al Wasl Road. Like many streets in the UAE, it has more than one name. Among the Philippino community who pack its pavements each weekend, the area is known as “Little Quiapo” thanks to its similarities with Manila’s old downtown and its many small groceries, restaurants and shops selling cheap electronics, toys and counterfeit football kits. For a generation of horticultural traders and their customers, however, Al Hudaiba Street is and always will be known as “Plant Street”.

As if in collusion with its neighbours, the red Coca-Cola sign of the Al Madina Flower Restaurant announces the start of Plant Street. The pavement outside the small parade of shops that gives the street its name immediately narrows and erupts with large-leaved banana plants, temporary hedges of hot-pink bougainvillaea, stacked boxes of bedding, carousels of seeds and bundles of garden canes. Most business takes place here, out on the pavement, where laid-back shop assistants sit on stools, chat and answer the occasional question while waiting patiently for their next customer.

Only the most determined shoppers make it past the rolls of black irrigation pipe, ramparts of compost bags and tottering stacks of window boxes to the inner sanctum of each shop, but it is here that the true identity of each business can be found.

Behind a small counter in the Al Madina Garden store, VCM Rafi, a bearded Plant Street veteran of 21 years, stands as if in a ship’s engine room, shouting into a phone to compete with the car horns outside and the Keralite music playing loudly within. Tools and seeds cover one wall while another contains carefully sorted spare parts for irrigation systems.

From the brightly lit, tungsten-white interior and tightly packed palms of the Hamid & Khalid Agricultural Company, on the other hand, it is clear that its owner, PTP Latheef, is a florist. Latheef first came to Dubai in 1974, and has been supplying local businesses and the public with cut flowers and indoor plants for the past 28 years. He now imports his stock directly from Holland and Kenya on a weekly basis.

Among these elder statesmen Vicky V, the owner of Fresh Flowers LLC, is a relative newcomer with only 17 years on Plant Street. His business started selling cut flowers, but then expanded to indoor plants. Like most of the other garden businesses here, he now also works in the corporate sector as well as doing small-scale landscaping, irrigation and maintenance jobs for private clients.

Plants, flowers, seeds and associated horticultural and agricultural paraphernalia have been sold on Al Hudaiba for as long as anybody can remember, and although there are now only six small horticultural traders left, they attract an enthusiastic and loyal band of customers from all over the city. “I enjoy this period from November to February. You can plant anything here now and it will grow. Every year I come here when the season starts and every week they have new things,” says Maurice Al Hadad, a Dubai resident of seven years and a keen gardener.

Steve Hall has lived in Dubai for only seven months, but Plant Street is already his destination of choice when it comes to shopping for his house and garden in The Meadows. “This place is great; I do about 90 per cent of my plant and garden shopping here. The plants are good quality, you can bargain with the shop owners, and everybody’s very pleasant.”

All of the shoppers I speak to cite price, value and choice as the key reasons for coming to Plant Street. For Hall, the prices charged by other retailers in Dubai are “inexcusable” and it’s true that bedding, houseplants and compost are over 30 per cent cheaper here than elsewhere in the city, but price alone can’t explain Plant Street’s longevity and success. Thanks to their many years of experience, the traders on Plant Street are sophisticated retailers. They know just what to sell, at what size, and at what price to achieve the high turnover that ensures their plants are always healthy and fresh, and stock only enough to make an impressive pavement display. This means there are very few buyer’s mistakes on Plant Street, none of those awkward plants that are too big, expensive, or just plain weird to sell, that hang around larger nurseries, generally making the place look unloved and untidy.

Weekly deliveries from Holland, Kenya and the local nurseries who also supply their less agile competition, allow the fulfilment of customer orders while attracting the all-important mixture of repeat customers and passing trade that is Plant Street’s lifeblood. When coupled with almost 30 years’ horticultural wisdom, something that customers say is noticeably absent at other Dubai garden stores, it’s clear that Plant Street’s success is the result of a potent retailing mix, but I like to think there’s yet another layer to the area’s appeal.

For regular shoppers like Al Hadad and Hall, both of whom visit the street with their families, buying plants here is more than a matter of shopping and though they might not care to admit it, the browsing, bargain hunting, haggling and banter with the traders are clearly part of a regular ritual they enjoy. Although it might not be to everybody’s taste, there’s a social mix and genuine vitality to this part of Satwa that’s noticeably absent from other parts of the city, and this is something that allows expats from places as far apart as Beirut and London, Mumbai and Manila, to buy plants in an atmosphere that manages to make all of them feel at home.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi

A school garden that offers lessons for everyone

Nick Leech visits the innovative new Mubarak bin Mohammed state school in downtown Abu Dhabi

Tomorrow, one of Abu Dhabi’s newest and most innovative gardens will open. A series of educational spaces dedicated to raising environmental awareness and addressing the five senses, it includes sensory gardens, play areas, outdoor classrooms and an internal shaded “eco-courtyard” complete with vertical gardens, solar panels and a remarkable steel tower that its architects, Broadway Malyan, refer to as an “eco-tree.”

Like some secret garden, this contemporary hortus conclusus is hidden behind the high, angular walls of the new Mubarak bin Mohammed Cycle One School, one of five public schools that will open for the first time tomorrow. The concept behind the garden is that teachers and pupils will be able to use it as an outdoor classroom and playground where important lessons can be learnt about plants, food and the environment.

For the teachers, staff and 1,200 pupils who are lucky enough to work, learn and play at the school, Sunday will be an exciting day indeed and the overall effect will surely be magical. They will arrive at a brand-new school, the rationale, design and construction of which represent a new chapter in Abu Dhabi’s educational history and a radical departure from current institutional and architectural norms. Commissioned by the Abu Dhabi Education Council as part of a strategic plan that includes building 100 new schools over 10 years, the school’s design was the result of an international competition that sought to provide a new architectural and pedagogical model for a new generation of schools.

When I visit the school an army of workers are still putting the finishing touches to the building while flocks of sparrows had already started making nests in the living walls and trees. Even from outside, architectural differences immediately catch the eye, not least the bold use of colour on the angular facade, the school’s welcoming, fenceless entrance and the oversized, apple green louvers that shade the windows of its library.

A grid of date palms guides pedestrians to the entrance, creating an effect that is more leisure centre than school – appropriate given that the building will act as a community centre outside school hours.

Silvia Razgova/The National

At the heart of the scheme, the multifunctional “eco-courtyard” helps to introduce natural light into the building’s core while acting as a flexible space and spill-out area for the labs, dining rooms and classrooms that surround it. Some of the largest vertical gardens I have seen in the UAE are set in niches on either side of the space. The vertical gardens are made from large PVC frames that contain hundreds of small nylon pockets, each of which holds a separate plant. Alternanthera, Portulaca grandiflora, and Sesuvium portulacastrum dominate and a line of drip irrigation feeds off a single vertical mainline to water each horizontal row of plants.

Given that the walls were planted in midsummer, they have been remarkably successful. The few patches that have suffered losses seem to have done so because of too much irrigation rather than too little, but such teething problems are to be expected.

At the centre of the courtyard is what designers refer to as the “eco-tree”. A steel tower structure containing platforms, planters and a spiral staircase wrapped with a steel mesh, the structure is festooned with such vines, climbers and trailing plants as the Coral Vine (Antigonon leptopus), Vining Milkweed (Tristellateia australasiae) and True Jasmine (Jasminum grandiflora).

For Drew Kent, Broadway Malyan’s landscape architect, the “tree” is one of the key spaces where outdoor lessons can take place. “The intention is to encourage students to explore the practical benefits of learning to look after plants by seeing first-hand how they grow, are harvested, and recycled. We imagine part of the science lesson could be held within the eco-tree itself.”

For Kent, the planting in the vertical gardens and eco-tree actively demonstrate the important role that landscape, trees and plants can play in creating more sustainable urban environments. They help to clean and cool the air, improve humidity and provide shade in the courtyard. In doing so, they make a positive contribution to the performance of the building by helping to reduce the amount of energy it consumes.

“Landscape is often just used as a backdrop or to help create a scene but here its practical and multi-use. We’ve taken the resources that are poured into the landscape – the water, the planting, the maintenance – and we’ve used those to serve the children, the school and the learning environment as a whole.”

Of all the positive roles for plants to play in the school, shade is the most important. Kent was required to shade 60 per cent of all outdoor gathering spaces and 75 per cent of all pathways and parking areas, a serious challenge from both a design and a budgetary perspective. For him, however, this provided yet another opportunity to show what plants can really do. “Trees provide a far better shading experience. They mitigate the moisture in the air and cool the wind and breezes that flow through them. If you were to sit in an exterior courtyard under an architectural shade and then under a tree, the environment would be much cooler under the tree. I think you could say that a tree can actually provide 20-30 per cent more cooling than an architectural shade would, something that is vital here in the UAE.”

And it’s in that statement that the real power of the school’s landscape lies. In many instances, it is familiar, using a tried and rather tired palette of plants that would be familiar to any novice gardener in the UAE. However, even when this is the case, it manages to use these plants in ways that make a functional contribution to the daily lives of the people in the school. It moves beyond the ornamental and points to a future when the real value of plants is harnessed and recognised.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi

Images: Silvia Razgova, The National