Ecological Friendship

The blue pea flower’s ubiquity and cultural relevance in Singapore have led many to assume the flower is a native one, yet the origins of the flower are not exactly clear. Some believe that the plant only became naturalized during the European arrival into Southeast Asia during the colonial era.² Native to Ternate (in the present-day Maluku Islands),³ C. ternatea is thought to have migrated out of the Maluku Islands to India in the 17th century, moving north towards Europe, and only becoming fully naturalized in Southeast Asia after the expansion of the colonial project and increasing species exchange across landscapes and islands, although sources and accounts of the plant are sparse.⁴ Interestingly, the blue pea calls home the same islands where nutmeg and clove originated, in the so-called Spice Islands. Both nutmeg and clove became staple plantation crops in Singapore during the colonial period. Unlike that of the lucrative spices, however, the naturalization of blue pea into Singapore is understood to have been spontaneous,⁵ owing in large part to the species’ ability to flourish under a wide range of soil conditions and its adaptability to both tropical and subtropical climates.⁶ While the blue pea’s high level of adaptability has led it to be considered invasive in parts of the world including Australia, the Pacific Islands, and the Galapagos, where the plant has overtaken and colonized entire ecosystems, this has not happened in Singapore, and the flower is thus not considered invasive.⁷

The blue pea’s adaptation into Singapore’s ecologies can actually be considered somewhat beneficial and perhaps even “friendly.” C. Ternatea has the ability to increase soil nitrogen levels,⁸ providing restoration to degraded and malnourished soils—one of the many negative environmental consequences of Singapore’s history of plantation monocropping.⁹ In fact, emerging research suggest that studying the blue pea could offer ecologists and biochemists clues towards more effective phytoextraction: removing contaminants and toxins from soils using hyperaccumulator plant bodies.¹⁰

In the Garden: Societal Friendship

In Singapore, the blue pea flower straddles the boundaries between wild and tame, sometimes found as an unruly climber stretching out across walls and fences, while other times the plant is maintained as a shrub. One place where the blue pea is commonly found is the community garden—a space that attempts to provide Singapore’s city-dwelling citizens with a direct relationship to the environment. Here, the blue pea flower can be understood as having direct friendships with community members while bearing witness to the larger-scale friendships that flourish in such spaces. One such friendship is the kind of sociality that a garden encourages, a quality that landscape architect Jeffrey Hou describes as “multimodality.” Such a quality gives a space potential for a variety of socio-urban benefits, including “individual well-being, cognitive benefits, affective benefits, community well-being, social network benefits, multicultural relations, community organizing and empowerment, crime reduction, nutrition and physical activity, economic benefits, environmental well-being, [and] climate change mitigation,” among others.¹¹ Citing some of these benefits, the Singapore government launched the “Community in Bloom” (CIB) program in 2005, seeking to open community gardens in neighborhoods all over Singapore to “[promote] a gardening cultural in Singapore that would contribute to the unique ambience of the city state”¹² while also “[forging] community ties in local neighbourhoods.”¹³ The program has been largely successful, with residents noting benefits such as environmental education, the “sense of ‘kampung’ community” in the gardens, and social connection.¹⁴

One community member interviewed in a 2009 article expressed that the community gardens are important parts of the neighborhood for children to learn about nature: “There is no other place where little kids can catch fishes and get their hands dirty with soil other than here.”¹⁵ The importance of fostering widespread opportunities for children to engage with their environment is reflected in a 1983 article titled “The outdoor way to teaching science,” where the author notes the presence of blue pea in science education at schools. The article describes how teachers were utilizing common flowers and plants to provide students with a hands-on approach to science: “Before [the students] had the garden and pond, many of these things (plants and animals) were just illustrations in a textbook to many of the children...most of the students say that science is one of their favourite subjects because they spend most of the lessons out of doors, and yet are learning at the same time.”¹⁶ The blue pea flower, and the students’ immediate, surrounding plant life, were utilized as a means of connecting students to their subjects of study while exposing them to the local natural environment—an aspect of children’s education that the teachers interviewed in the article saw as essential.¹⁷

Tradition and Family

In addition to witnessing, fostering, and being part of ecological and societal relationships, the blue pea figures into friendly foods, and thus, culinary and familial relationships surround this plant, too. The blue pea’s striking blue color, often associated with Peranakan cuisine, can be found used as a dye for kuehs, rice, dumplings, and teas—usually flavorless, but satisfyingly blue. The blue pea is also thought to provide medicinal support when consumed as tea—the flower’s dye can alleviate inflammation and treat chronic bronchitis.¹⁸ As a dessert, the blue pea is present in the happy moments, featuring in large communal celebrations such as Hari Raya and in smaller-scale intimacies when given as gift.

Conversations surrounding the blue pea in Singapore’s newspaper archives feature a notable number of articles where the blue pea is mentioned fondly, tinged with nostalgic affect and associated with familial relations. One article describes how an elderly interviewee makes dumplings: “She colours her dumplings blue but refuses to use artificial dyes. Instead she uses bunga telang, the traditional source of colouring—which her relatives pluck for her whenever they come across it.”¹⁹ In another article, titled “When we were young…” the author reminisces on the Singapore of the 1920s, writing, “Still, I missed the old favourites. ...the scented clematis and honeysuckle and the Blue Pea used by the Straits Chinese to dye one of their festival delicacies...these and others that we used to know seem to have gone out of fashion now.”²⁰ The quality of nostalgia that surrounds discussions about the blue pea flower might seen surprising given that the plant is non-native to Singapore, and yet these stories about memory, human-plant relations, and family kitchens point towards both the warmth evoked by the plant as well as a cultural desire to preserve tradition and culture.

Such is all reflected in a rather interesting primary source: Ethan Ee Hom Tan’s autobiographical children’s book titled Happiness is Handmade: A Peranakan Food Legacy in Singapore. In this book the 12-year old author, a fourth-generation descendant of hawker stall owners, writes about his daily life, recalling moments at the hawker centre, at home, and in the kitchen, observing his grandmother’s cooking. While naming various Peranakan dishes, Tan notes the warmth, familial unity, and joy that food brings into his life.²¹ The story can be treated as an important container of cultural heritage, told from the perspective of a child’s anecdotes of intimacy and friendship, which approaches a larger cultural aim of preserving and centering Peranakan cuisine. The blue pea here for Tan is immensely familiar and specific to his personal relationship to his grandmother, who cooks blue pea rice on the regular. Family and familiarity are pertinent to understanding the cultural role the blue pea plays in Singapore both past and present.

Conclusion

In this article, I sought to illustrate the ways in which the blue pea flower has “grown alongside” Singapore and its communities, fostering relationships with ecological, social, and cultural groups. Instead of positioning this non-native species as an invader, this paper has attempted to investigate the affective qualities that the plant possesses through a look at its many types of social, cultural, and environmental relationships in Singapore. More broadly, there is a story about urbanism and nature here—about what it means for a plant to live in a city today and what this may reveal about seemingly disconnected themes such as communal unity, science education, personal relationships, and the preservation of local culture.

References