Penang Hill

While waiting for the 5:45 pm tram
we decided to take a walk and looked for interesting plants
in the neighbourhood
( actually i want to backtrack and locate the Chain of Love Vine)
and found a

lone castor plant with fruits

a rather large nest ... click image to see the 'pattern' on wasp's nestBlue Pea Vine, Clitoria Ternateaon the ledge of a brickwall of a Chinese temple
i picked up 3 sizeable cones
from the casuarina then a custard apple (unripe)

In the front porch of someone's property found this little tree
with so many round fruits.
Gourd tree or calabash
Crescentia cujeta / tabung kayu

"...According to D.H. Janzen and P.S. Martin (Science Vol. 215, 1982), large grazing mammals, including extinct pleistocene elephants called gomphotheres, may have once eaten the huge gourds and dispersed the seeds in lowland forests."


Up in the mountain

Tracks

A hollowed- out trunk became an organic drainage pipe
- Bukit Bendera ( Penang Hill)

Nearby some strange 'metallic ' clicking sound - it went - click-click------click-click..
Using Wavepad obtained the following frequency /temporal Freq analysis plot.
I suspect the sound came from cricket frog(s).

Pitcher plant - Nepenthes albomarginata
( albus=white, marginatus=margin)
with the characteristics
white tomentose band
beneath the peristome at the roadside - On top of Penang Hill


6:44pm and the at 745 metres above sea-level.

then spotted a dusky leaf monkey with a long tail
enjoying leaves


Getting dark - time to go.

Penang - Kebun Bunga ( Botanic Garden)

Two pulais not far from pong-pong lined
entrance but just cant get
close to them

Queen of flowers - Bungor, Lagerstroemia loudonii flowering.
leaf monkey - click to see his face!

A vine with pretty pink orchid-like petals

Most of the leaves were shedded and scattered around the base
of the tree. I picked up 'bowling-pin' shaped flower tube...
A climber with bright colored round fruit of Trichosanthes quinuangulata

A red seed pod!

Close to the hotel Cititel i found
Love in a mist, Passiflora foetida
Flower ( above) and unripe fruit (below)
the ripen fruit is edible

Something old something new (FCH Park)

Ripe berry of Indian Cherry -Muntingia calabura


Flower of a cotton plant(Gossypium barbadense)


Couldnt resist - tiny pretty flowers of the Starfruit
Handkerchiefs drying in the sun? Have a cuppa of Java? Coffee berries.

SBG one early morning Mar 10

It was like in the night
when
we started the early am walk

Jambu air ( Eugenia javanica) - a nice change
from the typical pale yellowish flowers of another jambu.

Looking for the common Jasmine
and found this sp instead Arabian Jasmine ( Jasminum sambac) with
a rich 'vanilla-like' aroma.
Just then part of the flowers were illuminated with
soft golden early hour sun

Flowers of Icecream Bean...

'Winged' rachis of Inga edulis ( icecream bean)

we saw a couple of pulais (A. augustiloba) and even tried
to 'untangle' a few twin-twisted slender seedpods
in low branches - low enough for my
Pulai Queen to reach
but decided to leave
others to be
united
She also got a chance
to feel the velvet 'persimmon',
patted the 'leopard-spots'- like
strong
trunk of brazilian ironword,
walked on showered petals ( white mempat)
trampled on
a fallen rotten breakfruit
only the
lofty lotus flowers
proved a bit out-of-reach

Fort Canning Hill Park 02 visit

To my Pulai Queen who works so hard at home todayLAT's cartoon
(look for his signature at bottom right hand corner)
depicting the Portuguese attacking Singapore in 17th Century.

Heavy gate of the Fort - i have difficult to even move it.
( contrast
with the equally fortified look
of a Kapok spiky tree trunk below)

Lucky Emperor Qin Shi Huang didnt know about this spiky Kapok trunk.
( he might add this to his infamous hollow copper column with live coal )

and
the Kleenex 'soft' texture below

the 'paper-like' bark of eucalyptus treeFig clusters (Ficus variegata) on trunkI reached under a low shrub with plenty of 'cotton-bud' coming out from the branches. The pure white flowers have a refreshing smell and jasmine-like.
Terap ( Artocarpus elasticus)


Picked up the inflorescene of terap
which looked like
an oversize yellowish orange color
rambutan!
side view after Xsectioning.

Frontal view after xectioned

The Morning After ....

After the overnite rains...

& found brightly colored african tulips flowers littered the ground..

I picked up one .. indeed the cavity can hold plenty of water.. just
the right stuff for a squirt gun

I found one overfilled with rain water
an unsuspecting tiny grasshopper/cricket?
had fallen into the floral 'pond'

Meanwhile a short distance away
birds were seen picking up red tiny berries from a tree....
I inspected 5-6 of the pulais
but none
were flowering...
instead

the wind and rain brought down the already weakened dead lateral branches
mushrooms were seen
sprouting on some

this katydid with twin fine antennae was seen
sunning / drying out
on a Pulai's trunk...
click to checkout it's 'lobster-like' eyes
and armour-like thorax and short abdomen...

Everything looked so crisp and fresh...after overnight rain...
even my neighbour's pot plants appeared great.

laced lipstick ?

balls of flower buds?

_.o0O0o._