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Sunday, December 30, 2012

A new Clover-leaf Desmodium in Singapore?

I’m back in Bidadari Cemetery to finish up taking photos of plants before the place is razed to become a HDB estate. Together with another enthusiastic lover of wildflowers, we went searching for macro subjects.

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One of the oddities I found was this little herb. The leaves are clearly Desmodium triflorum but the flowers are white instead of purple!

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The purple flower Desmodium triflorium grows just beside the white one on the same grass patch. I tried to see if they belong to the same individuals by tracing their creeping horizontal stems but they are apparently not.

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This is another similar species, Desmodium heterophyllum but it has larger leaves and the flowers are also starkly different close-up. The white flower Desmodium however is similar to D. triflorium in every aspect. I wonder if it is a variety or an entirely new species yet to be recorded in Singapore? :x

Update: Was just updated that this might indeed be just a variety of Desmodium triflorium. Oh well..

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