Mistletoes and some weird and nice sights

Time for some random but what I thought are interesting plants which I encountered recently.

This is a newly germinated seedling of a common mistletoe, Macrosolen cocohinensis on a wild Cinnamon plant, Cinnamonum iners. The mistletoe is a hemiparasite, meaning that the sucker which is attached to the host will grow its haustoria (its ‘roots’) into the plant and obtained its nutrients from there. It is only partially parasitic (hence ‘hemi’), since it can still make food from its green leaves.

Here is another Macrosolen cochinchinensis, but this time on a starfruit tree.

You can see its trailing suckers. Another very common mistletoe that we can find in our urban environment is Dendrophthoe pentandra. That species one have pink instead of yellow flowers, and more irregularly shaped leaves.

This Syzygium aqueum or Water Apple tree was infested by the Pagoda bagworm moth. This bagworm eats by cutting circles on the leaves, thus making the leaves of this plant seemed to be ‘hole-punched’ many times.

Another Syzygium, this time S. polyanthum are flowering! Looks quite impressive when I stood under the tree and glance up at this sea of small white pom-pom like flowers.

And finally, this was what fascinates me most~ Yellowish white sap seems to be oozing out from this big Khaya grandifoliola tree. However, this has already solidified into hard resin. Quite cool~