Pitcher Plant Hybrids

For those who have been following my blog, you might have realised that it has not been updated for 4.5 years! Time is not something that I have the luxury of nowadays, especially when priorities and goals changed. But it has always been in my mind to come back someday. Both this blog and my plant identification website serves as a form of education in some form to a wider audience.

Kent Ridge Park to most is just a park, or to others, a part of the Southern Ridges, or, to bikers, one of their off-road cycling haven. However, it is home to a unique native form of forest called Adinandra belukar (I might blog more about this next time). Above is how it looks like, taken in the undergrowth.

Of course, as with the title, the aim is to search for a couple of pitcher plant hybrids which I have searched for in vain for awhile. Luckily, this time, I have the help of a knowledgeable pitcher plant researcher, who kindly agreed to show me.

Introducing Nepenthes x hookerana. This is a hybrid of Nepenthes rafflesiana and Nepenthes ampullaria. Such a beauty isn’t it! For those who have seen and known the native non-hybrid species, this hybrid pitcher looks totally different, being more slender and funnel like compared to rafflesiana.

This is another hybrid called Nepenthes x trichocarpa. It is a hybrid of Nepenthes gracilis and Nepenthes ampullaria. The pitchers are cute, stocky or plump in my opinion.

I was quite disturbed and dismayed when the researcher told me that he had seen evidence of people poaching the pitchers. I guess to some extent, humans always have a habit of wanting to possess things for themselves, like removing a piece of plant or animal from the environment and then growing it at their home. Personally, I gained more satisfaction seeing them in the wild, seeing them thriving in their habitat. I hope many of my readers feel the same way too.

Singapore, while small, have many natural places that will surprise many, I have no doubt on that. We need to cherish and appreciate them.

Bird Race through the eyes of a novice

Through the persistence of WQ and L, I was roped in to join in the yearly Bird Race organised by the Nature Society. This year, the race will be conducted through the Rail Corridor and its adjoining forests and parks.

I had set my alarm to PM instead of AM, and as a result, I had to waste $20 of cab fare to fly down to Dairy Farm Nature Park to meet my friends and was late for registration. =.=’’

And off we go! Our team, the nOObs, was (obviously) registered as a novice team and we first headed down the Dairy Farm trail to the Singapore Quarry.

Along the way, we heard a lot of noisy chatter in the forest so we went in to find a bunch of Asian Glossy Starlings, which were pretty much found everywhere here.

However, we were rewarded with beautiful rays of sun flecks penetrating through the forest canopy~ so nice…

This was my first time in Dairy Farm Nature Park, and I get to admire this platform facing the Quarry, where we noted quite a few birds, some with the help of the expert teams and their awesome scopes.

Along the way, we found many large nests on Albizia trees and this reminds me of Dr Ho Hua Chew’s talk of the importance of these trees for the nesting of large raptors.

Seems like bees also have a liking for this tree. WQ found this bee hive high up on another Albizia.

We headed towards the Rail Corridor and were rewarded by a small flock of Scaly-breasted Munias flying among the tall grasses.

I find this stretch of the corridor a pleasant place to walk by, as there was a small stream flowing beside the trail, and a lot of dragonflies as a result.

The highlight of the day for me was not a bird, but rather a Common Bluebottle butterfly puddling around us. Another check in my butterfly list!

Some other fellow birders on a bridge at a distance.

We heard some loud crashes at one point of the trail and saw a changeable hawk eagle (kindly ID-ed by HC) fighting with some long-tailed macaques.

SD had previously witnessed, photographed, and subsequently published his encounter of this eagle catching a banded leaf monkey in Panti (Link), so perhaps this eagle was indeed attempting to subdue a macaque. We watched for awhile but the commotion subsided without us knowing whether the eagle was really successful.

It was noon when we reached Bukit Batok Nature Park, and the place seemed practically devoid of any bird calls. Fortunately, we were still able see to this Asian Paradise Fly Catcher,

and the loveable White Crested Laughing Thrush.

Our last stop was at Kent Ridge Park where we recorded a few more species, ending up with 28 species in all~

While I am not a bird fanatic, I did enjoyed myself thoroughly today, especially because of the good company. Also learnt quite a number of new birds! :)

Kent Ridge Park

Supposed to have posted this days back but was rather busy with some stuff and late nights that had kept my spirits down lately.

This field trip is part of a Geography module I'm taking this sem, Ecological Systems, and the trip itself is at Kent Ridge Park, a place near NUS but I have yet to go there once.

I wouldnt introduce the flora of this place, since it was largely similar to that of Adinandra belukar forest; same as an earlier post @ Kent Ridge Road. The fauna however is more of interest to me particularly, since came across several animals I had not seen before

I was surprised how unafraid some birds are towards humans, apart from those myans and eurasian sparrows. Several White-crested laughing thrush were hopping at the road using in front of our group while our lecturer, Dr Wang, was describing the flora to us.

And just further ahead, I noticed a male pink-necked green pigeon. Me and Justin left the group to admire this beautiful bird. Din meant to not pay attention but all these astounding beauties never fail to catch my attention. These pigeons exhibit clear sexual dimorphism with the males having a more colorful plumage of purple, pink, orange and green while the females are just plain green.

There was a canopy walk near the end of the trail. Wow... this place is really not bad! keen-eyed Diana spotted two green-crested lizards (Bronchoecela cristatella) just in front of us. It was then I started cursing myself for not bringing a better camera today. All my pictures turned out to be blurred except for this...which isnt exactly a good one too.

The reason for my excitement is that this is my first time seeing this lizard. A common textbook example of describing local invasive species: the green crested lizard, a native forest dwelling species, was severely out-competed by the highly adaptable changable lizard (Calotes versicolor), an exotic species thought to have been introduced from Malaysia or Thailand.

I'm sure everyone reading this post have seen the changable lizard (above) somewhere at sometime but may not recognise it. This shows how successful this lizard established itself.

Towards the end of the walk, someone spotted an oriental whip snake. According to the SLOG blog, these snakes are mildy venomous but harmless to humans and rather docile. But that doesn't mean one can poach them!

And, the field trip ended and me Justin and Diana backtracked our way to the carpark where Justin left his car. I spotted another whip snake again, this time, without other students scrambling to take photos, I managed a closer shot and touched it gently. It then swiftly moves away up the canopy. I was mesmerized by its gracefully movements.

Definitely a place to revisit next time.

Eco Field trip #3: Adinandra Belukar

I didn't post my 2nd field trip to Sungei Buloh cos din took that many pictures that time. Well, this is a definitely must post trip, cos it was such an eye opener!

Adinandra belukar, from my practical handout, is basically a secondary forest with degraded soil. Soils are highly acidic and nutrient poor. Our study is done today in the forest along Kent Ridge Road.

We learnt about some of the keystone plants of the Adinandra belukar, like the tiup tiup, simpoh air (I finally know its name!) and tembusu. My TA Lainie was telling us that the fruit bats feed on the fruits of the tiup tiup. Theres bat droppings everywhere!

Bat shit

Tempusu (Fagraea fragrans) is probably one of the easier identifiable trees around as its trunk possesses deeply fissured bark. Flowers are fragrant and cream-colored. On the other hand, the tiup tiup tree has branches of alternate leaves with young tip leaves being reddish in color. It also have small, white rounded fruits growing on the branches.

Fissured bark

Alternate leaves of tiup tiup

On the grass patch, I noticed many spider webs. I read about these spiders before somewhere, but somehow it slipped my mind. Anyone know?

And then we started bashing into the forest, down the slope. Must be interesting for most of the girls who have never been to army. Especially for Denise I guess who grab a big tree branch as a walking stick for support. Reminds me of Gandalf in LOTR somehow ;p

A hazardous climb down

We went to search for a suitable transect site to do our study and decided on a nice one with little cobwebs and rather accessible (at least that what I feel). But apparently, there were some dead falling trees around but the group was careful, well they had to be. Chopchop finished everything and we were out just as rain started pouring.

Some stuff Jinghui spotted:

Some blue berries (anyone can ID it?) and cicada larvae moults. The moult is sitting in my plastic container now.

Web decorations or stabilimenta taken by jingui. Probably made by the St Andrew's Cross Spiders of the genus Argiope. There are many theories behind it, some say it is used to stablised the web (hence the name stabilimenta), to make the web visible to larger animals to prevent them bumping into the web or even to attract prey by reflecting UV light. From wiki.

Pitcher plants were the surprise of the day, as we saw so many of them around!

Growing right in the middle of the trail, a healthy looking pitcher plant

Closeup of the modified drip tips

Some more nice photogenic pitchers

Lainie pointed out more tiny pitchers growing on the grass field!

Tiny pitchers

A fun-filled and enjoyable day today. As always with the fun-loving denise and kai-qin and the aspiring bryophyte enthusiast jinghui. And of cos my TA who always give us a free rein to explore.