Fallow and Fertility Under Subsistence Cultivation in the Papua New Guinea Highlands: I. Fallow Successions

The Wola people of Nipa District in the Southern Highlands Province of Papua New Guinea show little interest in attempting to manipulate the fallow vegetation that colonises their garden sites when they cease to cultivate them, although they are intimately aware of the composition of different successions. Their disinterest signals an interesting farming regime, one in which people cultivate some land semi‐permanently under non‐perennial crops within the broad context of a swidden regime. This paper reports on the general sequence in which plants recolonise cleared sites, both according to locally identified stages and the results of a survey of fallow vegetation on sites uncultivated for different periods of time. The attitudes of local people to various regrowth species are also discussed in the context of fallow management. One species, the casuarina, emerges as pre‐eminent and its effect on fallow soil recuperation is investigated.