Orania sylvicola: Palms Punctuated but Keystone

Palms are ever-present in the Lowland Dipterocarp Forest but they do not dominate like Nipah would in mangrove. The many species we have do not colonize, and even if they do sometimes, like the lofty Ibul or Orania sylvicola (featured here), they remain considerably small and limited.

I really like to think of palms as punctuation marks - small but significant - spatially spread out amongst the letters of woody trees in the sentence of a rain forest. With a minor stroke and a simple dot or two here and there, these punctuation marks breathe life to the sentence with eloquence and depth of texture and intonation. Collectively, the palm population is like that. Add all these unobtrusive individual palms in the rain forest together, you will quickly realize what a reckoning force they are. They give life to the forest.

Like energy bars they provide bountiful supply of nectar and pollen to a whole range of beetles, bees and flies throughout the year. These tireless workers swarm as cars and trucks would to patrol stations. The power food they get from palms fuels in no small part the dynamism of the entire forest ecosystem through the myriad services that they provide as pollinators of other plants, for example.

Palms also provide fruits all year round for birds, civet cats and many other arboreal creatures such as monkeys. Their leafy crown is a roosting haven for bats, snakes and lizards, and under their often broad leaf-bases the flying lemurs wait out the day in shade and security. And colonies upon colonies of ants have made rattans (climbing palms) their ubiquitous home.

So it can be seen how keystone palms are - as keystone as fig trees. When reforesting disturbed areas it bears well to remember to introduce native palms as second-stage planting under re-established trees.

In present-day Singapore, the Ibul palm (reaching 20m) are exceedingly rare and hard to find; the showy golden-brown leaf-bases is often hidden high up in the sub-canopy and obscured from view by the leafy crowns of smaller understory trees below. We are indeed fortunate to have a few living specimens extent in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve today.

Silvery greyish-brown leaflets with drooping tips.

Close-up of jagged leaf-tips.

Greyish trunk with warty protuberances.

Adventitious roots seeking the earth beneath the leaf litter.

Immature green fruits with 3 petals.

Mature fruits are highly poisonous.

Cratoxylum arborescens: Giant of Lower Peirce Trail

You may not have taken notice of its lofty canopy and long ascending branches as you walk under smaller trees shading the Cyathea section of the Lower Peirce Trail...

but its solitary trunk near the boardwalk would have stopped you in your path with its imposing size and height.

Its fissured bark is as deeply arresting as the meandering stream that trickles past its shadow below, and if you would allow it... into the very recesses of an endearing memory.

Geronggang or Cratoxylum arborescens can grow to a giddy height of 50m on dry land or peat swamp forest. At almost 30m tall and a meter diameter, our ancient giant stands out easily as the largest tree along the boardwalk at Lower Peirce Trail today. The tree, however, remains a confounding mystery for visitors. There is no educational plaque or label to its honour.

Yet, verily, the expressive branches above never fail to shower hints of its identity with leaves green and yellow like calling cards for those native souls who want to befriend a native tree of home but stops affront - clueless - with neither flowers nor fruits nor seeds to hold, to see, to examine.

For these are truly hard to find... tiny scarlet petals and small cryptic-brown capsules with persistent sepals and ever smaller winged seeds... they fall from the great heights and scatter asunder like stardust into the cosmic zone of the forest floor... lost into its myriad cracks, layers and darkness.

To find them would take the pace of a snail, the eyes of a crested serpent eagle, and a mind that can only be human: one who would dedicate time and energy scouring not for food gains or rest as forest animals instinctively do but for something keenly epistemological - knowledge and truth.

And as luck would have it, a little scarlet bud sit prim and proper on the ball of my finger after one inconspicuous hour inching up and down the boardwalk beneath the tree.

Two capsules later and a 4m tall sapling nearby complete the joy of my inconsequential botanical life. There is hope.

My mind happily gravitates towards Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (BTNR) not far away. I am again reminded that here in Peirce lies a hinterland of contiguous mature-secondary forest linking and giving BTNR its resiliency against the backdrop of forest fragmentation. It is literally a sea of green lapping at its eastern foot.

In return, Peirce takes seeds of regeneration from BTNR through bats, birds and wind, and share essential pollinators for its successional right to becoming a primary forest again one day. Peirce in proximity to BTNR is such a potent showcase of regrowth, and the presence of the very rare Geronggang [red arrow below] adds poignancy to this potential.

Footnote: I have also found to date a Geronggang on the western part of Peirce [blue arrow above] which touches base with BTNR, and another in the forest of Mandai.

Earth Day 2010: We can live life with a little bit of dirt

Today is one special 'dirty' Earth Day for me. Through the invitation and support of a kind soul, I have the opportunity to put together a workshop called Toxic-Free Cleaning and have 30 enthusiastic listeners chanting 'Change We Can!'

We can change the way we clean in the knowledge that we can certainly live life with a little bit of dirt, have a lot less detergents and be a lot smarter and selective in using them, knowing them. That we are masters of detergents and not slaves.

Yes, today, we hold up high a common belief that we can be a little bit more dirty for a cleaner and safer earth. We can say no a lot louder to plastic and harmful chemicals.

And importantly, we also know we have options to choose safer alternatives. Look no further for valuable lessons than the collective wisdom and folk knowledge of our innovative grannies. We can make cheap and safe and natural cleaners from scratch right in the kitchen.

If only we go ask our elders how they managed housekeeping in the good old days without the modern 'you-must-have' detergents. I am sure you can extend the list that I have in my workshop and go beyond the used tea bags, baking soda, Epsom Salt, lemons and limes, vinegar and wood ash, lye powder (kansui) and a good rub of coconut oil or two.

Today we also celebrated trees in our backyard - the Coconut, the Acacia and the Tamarind trees. We make liquid soap with Acacia pods (above photo) and return the original shine to my much-tarnished copper trophy with a good rub of tamarind pulp. We make them without ever raising a degree from the stove.

Yes, today we give ourselves the power of Change. All we need is to give it a good shake here, a good rub there, and a healthy dose of innovation, imagination and fun making toxic-free cleaners. Change We Can... we certainly can! : )

Precious relic of village life below Bukit Timah Hill

This must be one of the last (if not last) communal washing point left in Singapore today. It is located at the foothill of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve in a quiet corner off old Senapang Road where a village once stood - a precious relic of village life in the past.

While most communal washing points in old Singapore came equipped with hand-pumps and underground wells, some like this rare one had free flowing water coming off dependable sources like surface drainage off abutting hills.

Senapang's communal washing point gets its constant supply of water from the stream in the adjacent Taban Valley.

Fortunately for us, the construction of a new condominium nearby did not encroached upon the communal washing point. Being part of an existing drainage system probably saved it.

I earnestly invite you to drop by here and marvel at the little bit of history we still have. Bring the children too. Perhaps, after a good hearty nature walk up the hill, we can take a moment rest and ponder over its crystal clear water and be inspired to reflect and discuss topical issues such as climate change, rising temperature, water depletion and pollution... issues that are akin to environment degradation, forest destruction and lost of natural habitats and sustainable water catchments.

If a nature walk should end this way, it is a way truly forward in hope.

Direction: Walk halfway up Hindhede Drive, turn right into a small open field where there is a trail lined with sawn logs. Follow it into the wooded area till you see the communal washing point. It should not take you more than 5 minutes.

Phoenix canariensis: Canary Island Date Palm

I like to introduce you this spectacular exotic palm, Phoenix canariensis (commonly called Canary Island Date Palm), planted along Sentosa's roadside. It has a massive trunk measuring 222cm girth, a size not readily associated with the lanky and wispy palm image in our mind.

It is fruiting at the moment.

The feathery fronds are long, narrow and tapering to a point.

The thin pulp is eatable but too little to consider as food except perhaps in famine.

You can find a few of this palm near Sentosa bus station in the vicinity of the Beach Station. Happy plant-hunting! : )

The World of Rubiaceae and Pavetta wallichiana

Brilliantly white and elegantly erect, the flowers of the Pavetta wallichiana herald their presence against the shadows of the rain forest interior and, like little trumpets, serenading the greatness of its family Rubiaceae. Why? Well, for one, Rubiaceae is the biggest family of trees in Malaya and has members in such significant number and diversity in the understory that their presence and density is a measure of the intactness of the rain forest on a whole.

So, seeing Pavetta and other rubiaceous shrubs is good news. The forest has a healthy measure of composition indicative of minimal disturbance, or showing sign of regeneration, at the lower strata. In fact, in climax condition, the forest teems not only with rubiaceous trees and shrubs, but a whole kaleidoscope of fascinating herbs, climbers and epiphytes such as Hydnophytum formicarium, an ant plant. Rubiaceae happens to be the fifth largest family of flowering plants in the world too.

However, the fascination do not stop there at the grand level; Pavetta wallichiana gives us an insight into the microcosmic niche of bacterial association. This is what E.J.H. Corner described in the Wayside Trees of Malaya: "The species of this genus are interesting because there occur in the little oblong, dark green, thickened flecks or warts on the leaves nitrogen-fixing bacteria like those on the roots of leguminous plants and Casuarinas. As a consequence, Pavettas are said to give a rich manure and to be useful as a cover-crop under shady conditions".

Close-up of warts below.

The useful bacteria are pass into the seeds and into the next generation of plants and the association remains unbroken. (Photo of fruit below)

Such is the wonder of Rubiaceae and Pavetta wallichiana. : )

Floral Complexity of Strophanthus caudatus

Strophanthus caudatus, a liana, flowered recently in MacRitchie. It belongs to the family Apocynaceae - the same family to which belongs the towering Pulai tree at Kampong Melayu, Pulau Ubin.

In Singapore, we have on record two species of Strophanthus, and possibly, an unknown third yet to be identified. Strophanthus spp. are well-known in medicine, yielding Strophanthins, glycosides used to treat heart disease. In their countries of origin - basically of the Old World, stretching from Africa to Asia - these climbing shrubs or lianas are famed for their lethal poison for hunting. There are currently about 38 species known.

Today, we find a much bigger Apocynaceae expanded under the relatively new APG II system of classification. It has been combined with the closely allied family Asclepiadaceae, the family of the familiar Hoya plants; both families having exquisitely intricate floral designs if one care to examine closely.

Besides the beguilingly long slender red 'tails' (some measuring about 14cm), the corolla of Strophanthus caudatus is crowned with a corona of 5 paired creamy lobes. Projecting from the middle one might assume at first glance to be the stigma and style, but no, it is not.

Take the flower apart and you will see it is actually the distal long extensions of the anther-tips joined together; the anthers being short, arrow-shaped, huddled together to form a cone arising from the throat of the corolla tube (see photo above).

Going further along, try taking the anthers apart. You will realized immediately they are also joined... yes, to the stigma. From here, your investigation compels you towards the complexity of such a floral arrangement and how you might wonder the kind of pollination strategies or pollinators are involved here and what advantages there are to advance such a seemingly successful plant group.

Looking further into the inner cryptic chamber of the corolla tube, I found the special structure called the clavuncula. It is an enlarged drum-shaped stigma of which the sides and lower surface are the receptive zones. The clavuncula is found to be coherent with the anthers, stuck together with sticky white exudates (third from the left, the rest being stamens).

I am tempted to think the pollens are to be found at the pointed top of the anthers which is facing inward around the sterile apex of the clavuncula. As of now, I cannot confirm it. The rotten mass that I found there is undefinable at the time of my investigation. Come next flowering season, I will definitely head straight to MacRitchie to look for fresh specimens and fresh pollens if I can. Wish me luck.

New book: Trees of Tropical Asia

Have you seen flowers that astound you with their quiet beauty and wished they speak to you and you knew them and call them by name?

Or pick a fallen fruit and marvel its shape and texture, and wondered which mother tree, amongst the bewildering many towering overhead, is shedding it for new grow, new hope?

If only we could, we lament. (See footnote for identity of the flowers and fruit pictured above)

For those who are inspired by our magnificent forest and want to find out more, you will find a great resource in James V. LaFrankie, JR. He has just published a fantastic illustrated guide book to diversity, Trees of Tropical Asia. For more information, check out the book here: http://www.blacktreepublications.com/


Footnote
First photo: flowers of Gomphandra quadrifida
Second photo: fruit of Vatica pauciflora

Note of Appreciation: Jim, thanks so much for allowing me the pleasure of contributing, in a small way, photos to your guide book. I believe it will become the most popular addition - 'bible' - to the introduction of tropical forest plants accompanying the classic Corner's Wayside Trees of Malaya. Cheers : )

Rare strangling fig hanging on

A year or more had gone by since its host tree died and felled, but the strangling fig is still alive today. Good news though. This fig - Ficus xylophylla (meaning woody-leafed) - is relatively rare in Singapore .

It can be found leaning out at the forest edge near the beginning of Lornie Trail Boardwalk (See photo below: it is located between the two giant trees - behind the jogger in the photo).

Photo below: Closer look at the gap created by the fallen host tree.

The fig has made quick recovery: leafy sprigs ascending from its prostrated trunk.


Close-up of its robust leaves.