Every place has a wild side

9 Jun 2013

Wild flowers in Singapore

Hello everyone and welcome to our humble blog. Do join us on our journey as we try to feature selected fauna and flora that can be found in Singapore.

As you will see, I am primarily interested in plants and hence, I will be mainly sharing about certain plants that I observe during my field work and discovery trips to various parts of Singapore. These plants are easy to miss as they can be quite small and hard to spot in a homogenous patch of green vegetation. Hence, I hope that these pictures will interest you to take a closer look at your environment the next time you visit a park or take a nature walk. Who knows what interesting plants you might see if you pay a little more attention? ;)

Ipomoea triloba

Kranji, Singapore

Spathoglottis plicata

Kranji, Singapore

Sphagneticola trilobata

Kranji, Singapore

Bidens alba

Kranji, Singapore

The pictures above are just a small collection of wild flowers in Singapore, all patiently taught by my mentor as I am still very new to plants and plant IDs. You might be familiar with Sphagneticola trilobata (Creeping Daisy) as it is commonly planted as an ornamental plant for decorative purposes in parks and along the roadside.

That's all from me for now. If you are interested to find out more about plants, do visit the following links. :)

Some useful online resources for plants in Singapore (in no particular order):

1. Flora Fauna Web

http://florafaunaweb.nparks.gov.sg/Home.aspx

2. Flora Singapura

http://florasingapura.com/Home.php

3. The Plant Observatory

http://www.natureloveyou.sg/

4. The Total Vascular Flora of Singapore Online

http://floraofsingapore.wordpress.com/

5. Urban Forest

http://uforest.org/home.html

7 Jun 2013

Singapore dungabee fact #1

Not all dung beetles like to roll their food (i.e. poop). In fact, a large majority of Singapore's dung beetles love to bury the dung instead! Such dung beetles are called tunnellers as they form tunnels directly under the dung source and bring down balls of dung into the soil. These balls serve as brood balls where female dung beetles lay their eggs inside. The hatched beetle larva then feeds on the dung brood ball from the inside out!

Singapore's largest recorded dung beetle is also a tunneller!

Male Catharsius molossus (Photo by Eunice Soh)

These big "dungabees" are able to bury large amounts of dung into the ground and thus "clean" the surface of the soil. This is also why their genus name is Catharsius, which is derived from the Greek word kartharsios, meaning purifier. Kinda cool huh. :)

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharsius