Uses of plants @ SBWR.

All this plants found in Sungei Buloh are very useful and can help Man’s development greatly. In the fields of food, medicine, and etc.

Water Lettuce: Cultivated as food for pigs.

Water Hyacinth: Short offsets are produced that can be used for propagation.

Sea Hibiscus: The wood is used for planking, boat-building, tool handles, house supports and firewood. The fibre from the bark is used for strings and ropes in the making of fishing lines. The infusion from the roots is used for curing fever. The leaves and shoots are boiled in sugar for curing coughs and bronchitis.

Excoecaria Agallocha (Common name: Buta-Buta / Blind-Your-Eyes): The wood is used for firewood, charcoal and carpentry. It’s latex is used to treat ulcers and oil from seeds is applied to scabies.

Acanthus Ebracteatus (Sea Holly): Seeds are used in a cough remedy. Crushed seeds are applied as a poultice on boils. Two or three seeds are given to children to kill parasitic intestinal worms.

Bruguiera Cylindrica: The wood mainly used for firewood.

Avicennia Alba: The wood is used as a rudder of a boat. The ash is used as soap. The fruits can be eaten roasted, boiled or sun-dried.

Xylocarpus Granatum: The hardy wood is use for boat-building & furniture; bark for tanning and medicinally against dysentery, and roots and seeds in medicinal preparations.

Nypa Fruticans: Atap- chee, a sweetmeat, is made from it’s young seeds, and served in a local desert call ice-kacang.

Singapore Rhododendron (Flower): Cure of diarrhea

Dillenia suffruticosa: The large and robust leaves are suitable for disposable platters and as wrappers for tempeh, a fermented soybean delicacy. Sap from the twigs or leaf stalks are applied to external wound to stop bleeding.

Bird Nest Fern: Dead fronds remain on fern as a thick skirt beneath, home to small animals and insects.

Nyireh:It is used as wood for handles of traditional knives and in building boats, the bark for tanning and dyeing cloth. The seeds are used to treat stomachache.

Bakung or Seashore spider lily: It is poisonous and medicinal uses include inducing vomiting when wounded by a poison arrow. The leaves are used by Malays in a poultice to treat fevers, headaches, swellings. Boiling the plant results in a lotion for general use on the body. The crushed leaves are used to wash piles. Mixed with honey they are applied to wounds and abscesses.

Api-api jambu: The fruits are eaten, leaves fed to livestock while the wood produces good-quality pulp for paper production. In traditional medicine, the bark resin is used as a contraceptive and the leaves used to treat burns.

Baru-baru or Portia tree: The timber is hard and Fiji natives praise it as being "almost indestructible underwater". In the Philippines it is prized for making musical instruments. Oil is extracted from the seeds and gum from the bark, while an orange-yellow dye is extracted from the wood.

Bakau putih: The propagules are occasionally eaten after boiling, and eaten with sugar and coconut. Fishermen do not like to use the wood for fish-traps as they say it has a peculiar smell that frightens fishes away. The timber is heavy and reddish.