“Look at how fine those leaves are,” said Dika Nanta, pointing up to the waving branches of a spindly tree. “They’re so wispy that at first glance it’s hard to imagine why Balinese people sometimes call this tree ‘the broomstick of the gods’.”
The moringa tree (Moringa oleifera) we were looking at really was quite unremarkable – less statuesque than the rambutan tree nearby and far less imposing than the mango trees on the other side of the road. Yet moringa (daun kelor in Bahasa Indonesia) was once believed to have such intense magical properties that a simple sprig of this “broomstick of the gods” would be used to brush the evil spirits away from the resting place of a deceased person.
Nanta, who graduated from Udayana University with a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture, grew up in a village near Ubud (considered Bali’s spiritual heartland) and recalls eating moringa regularly as a child, most often boiled in a spicy stew. More recently, in his official capacity as “Botanical Guru” at the new Raffles Bali, he has become fascinated by both the science and traditional beliefs behind what he refers to as “Bali’s tree of life”.
“Moringa was traditionally a common part of the Balinese diet,” he said. “It began to fall into disuse long before modern science latched onto the spectacular nutritional benefits of what is now known in the West as a superfood.”
According to a 2013 study on traditional uses of Moringa oleifera published in International Journal of Phytotherapy Research, the plant’s dried leaves contain seven times the Vitamin C of oranges, nine times more protein than yoghurt, 10 times more Vitamin A than carrots and 15 times the potassium of bananas. It’s thought to have 17 times more calcium than milk and 25 times more iron than spinach.