Saturday, July 03, 2010

SBG July 3 '10 - The Man Who Planted Trees ( L'homme qui plantait des arbres)

Saw this meteorological devices on the tree trunk just before crossing the traffic junction to SBG.
See how many devices you can make out from this foto.  Are they interested in limited directional wind velocity  and the wind vane that might hit the Bird's Nest fern nearby?

This is a typical setup for Weather Monitoring. Not all the components are visible on the tree above.

 Chain-Of-Love now  had grown and carpeted the canopy near the canteen.
Nice to look at now. Remind me of my childhood plants despite being a nuisance invasive pest hard to be eradicated.

Maintenance might be needed to clear away the old leaves.

 The Man who planted Trees.
 Three months had passed - the seedlings were planted by hundreds of Singaporean
from all walks of life

Elephant apples littered the ground. 
I saw one lone worker clearing the fragipani garden. He even plucked the brown, yellow leaves from the low branches. The ground was so clean - not even one fallen leaf in sight - talking about proactive anti littering practice. I once joked about  why not shake-the-trees and picked up the dead leaf so it wont litter the ground.

 
Scorpion crawling on a branch?  Inflorescence fallen from elsewhere ended up on a branch of Sea Ebony, Diospyros ferrea. I picked up one on the ground and it was hard and felt  like those from the coconut flowers



Logs... twigs....lets get the fire going.... just a thought. SBG recycled them for compost..
City dwellers hardly find these in your concrete forest.



A single strand of  'aerial' root of Curtain Ivy.
I then walked through hundreds of them hanging from above .... a bit like car-wash.
[ no wonder i got ants, little spiders in my hairs .. harmless though]
Several months had passed and the roots of Curtain Ivy had managed to descend to respectable length. It was nothing in March i recalled. A video of walking through this curtain is here. ( using P5100)

 

Cascading  Pool
 
Rain rain rain - Tai-qi practice under shelter. It was a lovely walk despite the moderate drizzle. Cool and re refreshing.  Crowds were light  but the usual dog - walkers, sporadic joggers, keen nature lovers were there. NOG attracted a fair bit of crowd. The Library was v tidy, great exhibits neatly arranged. Of course not forgetting the Volunteer Guides dishing out interesting bits of the plants in SBG ground. Chinese-speaking group here.. Japanese speaking group there and English speaking group over there. I saw them all.  

Not far from the SBG heritage Giant ...

the wet ground was littered with this lovely stick of wing seeds... I took one home.

 I held the stick against the light...now you can see the seeds clearly.

Looking up i saw the parent plant
where the wing-seeds-on-a-stick came from.
Do you know the name of this tree? Terminalia subspathulata [ thanks to Mahaya]


Even the 'old wound' was decorated with ferns..(side way view above)
Bark and debark of a Golden Penda, Xanthostemon chrysanthus

Blue Latan Palm, Latania loddigesii.. some insects were buzzing around.

 Wind was pretty strong and the umbrella was useless to stop the young shooting of this rattan palm from swaying around. No choice a flash was fired which obliterated the sheath covering the side branches..


Even the ginger flowers clamped up under the rain...
 Its 10:00am another batch of guided tour .... all geared up for the rain


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