Champerai Trail on National Day

It has been more than 6 months since I last visited a forest in Singapore. This year has been an especially interesting one, since I have changed a few of the priorities of my life because of some chance events. Nevertheless, I am glad to say that my obsession with plants did not falter.

Since I have a bit of time to spare this morning, I decided to head down MacRitchie Reservoir for a walk around the Champerai Trail to familiarised myself back with its floral life.

I was in luck! The Bats Laurel, Prunus polystachya, was showing off its fluffy white flowers during national day.

The entire tree was flowering profusely as you can see.

In cahoots with the Bat’s Laurel, the Aidia densiflora also decided to show off its national pride by hanging out their bright and red berries. It was really quite a spectacle to behold when almost all of these individuals along the boardwalk decorated the landscape in these dots of red.

Not to be left behind, a few Clerodendrum laevifolium managed to display its black fruits flanked by its red starry sepals.

From my writing, I was in an obvious cheerful mood today. Three Pacific Swallows also shared my joy by whistling loudly and flying back and fro to a low lying branch.

There is a plant whose identity eluded me, for now. Looks like it did not managed to get its fruits ripen in time for this festive season though.

It is quite unfortunate that most of the visitors who venture to this nature reserve gave scant notice to the rich and beautiful flora life here. So if you happen to be one of them, open your eyes wide next time!

Where is the Central Catchment Nature Reserve?

All of us know where the Central Catchment Nature Reserve (CCNR) is. Or do we?

I was unable to find an accurate map showing the boundaries of the CCNR from the National Parks Board (link), Singapore Land Authority (Onemap.sg), and even Google Maps.

In the end, after some research, the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore (Master Plan 2008) and the Ministry of Defence (Singapore Topographic Map) seem to be the only two which got it right. Not surprising, considering the need for accuracy for land-use planning and navigation for the military respectively.

 

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Download the map of Central Catchment Nature Reserve

 

Unable to obtain a decent map, I decided to created one on my own. You may download the high-resolution map free at my Download page. Please email me if you find any discrepancies. I will be more than happy to correct it!

 

Some explanations of the legend are described below.

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Nature Reserve:	Other than Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, the rest of this category belong to CCNR. Note that CCNR also includes the reservoirs which it surrounds
Non-Reserve Forest:	Most of these areas are forest. Individual buildings within are excluded
Park:	MacRitchite Reservoir Park
Residential:	Mainly residential. Includes eateries and other commercial entities
Singapore Zoological Gardens:	Includes Night Safari, and the upcoming River Safari
Utility:	If you zoom into Google Earth at this patch, you can see satellite dishes with Singtel’s logo

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Having consistent and accurate information is important, especially when it involves the conservation of our fragile biodiversity. Already, the CCNR is already threatened by many developments and structures within and surrounding it; and it will continue to be faced with them in the future.

But, that will be a separate post for another day. Stay tuned!

 

The map was created using ArcGIS with the following resources:

• Google Earth Satellite Images
• Master Plan 2008
• Road layer was adapted from Cloudmade.com, which is in turned sourced from www.openstreetmap.org.

Butterflies galore in CCNR

Had an awesome trip in CCNR to spend the new year with HL, N, and R. I have been through this stretch of forest many times but this was the first since I started to learn about butterflies seriously. Boy, there were so many species new to me!

A Malay Lacewing on a Leea indica. The white and yellow patches at the lower portion of the forewing is characteristic of a female.

An Archduke with its distinctive orange tipped antennae helps to separate it from the Dark Tipped Archduke.

Probably a Malay Viscount.

This unimpressive (because of its dull colour) Common Faun kept skirting about the forest floor.

Surprisingly, we saw many stick insects, about 4 today. They were relatively easy to identify when they were flying because of their pink wings.

A Common Mormon feeding on an Asystasia gangetica flower.

An uncommon Rusty Leaf Mistletoe, Scurrula ferruginea growing from a Sendudok.

This Common Snow Flat was feeding on the bird dropping. Ew…

First time seeing the fruit of this Campnosperma squamatum.

What I thought was a figging tree turned out to be Gironniera nervosa after peeping through my binos.

An unknown aquatic plant with white flowers. Update: This is an exotic plant, Echinodorus palaefolius. Thanks to WF for the ID.

There were many of these Cruisers but only one allowed me to take a decent shot, because there was an abundance of flowers for it feed, therefore stopping many times to pose for a shot.

This feeding long tailed macaque made us notice…

the many fallen ripe fruits of Garcinia sp. (a native Mangosteen species)on the forest floor.

There were so many other butterfly species that we saw today! Its a pity that many were too fast to be captured on camera. Worthy to be back for another trip!

Berry fruity CCNR

Today I was back a different part of CCNR again with some friends. Not as much flowers and fruits as I expected, but still, it wasn’t that bad.

Bright orange fruits of Urophyllum griffithianum, as kindly ID-ed by Joe Lai previously~

My first time seeing the fruits of Clerodendrum villosum! Certainly looks quite pretty with its black berry on its recurved calyx.

Think this big black fruit belongs to another Urophyllum~

Velvety yellow fruits of Gironniera nervosa.

This red berries of Gynotroches axillaris looks delicious. Should have tried it just now =.=’’

An unknown bi-capsulated fruit.

Acorns anyone?

CK noticed this cute tiny caterpillar with pink dots.

And lastly, a mother macaque running to grab her baby away from us when we approached.

It was only when I was looking at this picture that I realised that the baby was badly mauled.

Elaeocarpus mass flowering and fruiting

It was just a sudden impulse that I decided to take a walk by myself to MacRitchie Reservoir. Perhaps it was because that it had been ages since I had gone out to learn more new plants.

I had heard that many plants have been flowering and fruiting for the past month, and luckily I was not too late to witness some of them before the season past.

The most spectacular was the Elaeocarpus petiolatus flowers, which bear droopy white inflorescences. Almost every tree was flowering!

A look from bottom up.

The flowering had passed for another Elaeocarpus species, E. mastersii, and many trees now bear its ovoid fruits.

And so was this common tree, Champereia manillana, along, er Champereia Trail.

Pretty red fruits of this Glochidion superbum.

Some of them are more pinkish.

Nice rounded fruits of Calophyllum lanigerum. However, some of them looked like they have been parasitised, with bored holes visible form the surface.

For those who are interested in flowers and fruits, now is a good time to go to our nature reserves for a walk!

Back to MacRitchie

Wishing everyone a happy new year with this Hoya latifolia flowers!

Today was a tiring day, went to the Singapore Botanic Gardens (will blog that another day) for a walk before going back school and then to MacRiitchie Reservoir.

Red young leaves of this Garcinia probably griffithii sapling. Heard from KY that another hypothesis of why young leaves are red is because insects (many herbivores are insects) cannot see this colour.

These are, I believed the flowers of the Blue Mahang, Macaranga heynei.

There were many of these flowers scattered on the forest floor. Not sure what these are though =.=”

I saw this fruit of the climber, Willughbeia species 3 weeks ago, but it doesn’t seem to have grown in size.

Minuscule fruits from this shrub, Trema cannabina.

These are the dehisced fruits of the Thottea grandiflora. Their red flowers have sealed petals like a bell. Pity I can’t find it today.

Lastly, dark purple young leaves and the distinct crescent  stipules from Aporosa benthamiana.

Snakes in MacRitchie

While today was solely a botanical trip, I won’t be blogging much about them since there isn’t much fruits or flowers today (Don’t want to bore too many of you with plain green leaves!). Here are some snap shots of the reptiles and some other animals we saw along the way this morning.

WQ spotted this Oriental Whip Snake at our knee level, and it stayed motionless for a long while, allowing us to take all the photos we want.

A pretty docile and pretty snake with its bright green colour. Look at how small it is~

Long Tailed Macaques are a common sight in MacRitchie, and I often see them feeding on young saplings of plants. This time however, one of them was feeding on a fruit, which unfortunately we were unable to identify. It has copious white sap (you can see the stain on the monkey’s lips),

and reddish seeds? in the interior. The monkey was only aiming for those red stuff and left the rest of the fruit untouched. Any one knows the ID?

These aquatic plants are the Pipewort, Eriocaulon sp. They have cute white ball shaped inflorescences.

This huge snake resting on a overhanging tree branch above the reservoir. This is probably the Red Tailed Racer, a non-venomous snake. It looks pretty intimidating though~

Here is another shot of it.

A juvenile Clouded Monitor Lizard came foraging in front of us unperturbed by our presence, allowing me to get some nice shots of it.

All in all, a good trip, meeting a long lost friend and also daring the monkeys to snatch my plastic bag secured on my bag with a carabrina (They did attempted but were unsuccessful!)