lekowala!

Wednesday was racial harmony day so I came to school in my bhangra outfit.  At assembly we were treated to the mock Chinese, Malay and Indian weddings, staged by teachers and students.  It was really funny to see the discipline master out of character.  The Principal said it was the most memorable event in the past half year and I couldn’t agree with him more.  It seemed like all else had stopped and all minds and hearts were focussed on the celebrations.  Its funny how the school has the knack of doing this to me, surreal.  The last time was in the classroom, 5 months ago when students were acting as “toothpickases” snapping toothpicks to measure rates of enzyme activity.  The 70 minutes passed by as though they were mere seconds but I remember that lesson as though it was just a few days ago.   It lingers like a fragrance.

Today I carried out a lab session with a Secondary 3 class. It was basically making epidermal peels from Aloe barbadensis, Tristellateia australasia and Ixora javensis and make observations on any differences between the species in terms of stomatal density. So the class go down to the school grounds to collect the plants themselves and taught them how to make those epidermal peels (some really got quite good at doing that). They were somehow quite surprised to discover actual stomata before their very eyes under 100x magnification. It was really nice to see some wonderment in their eyes. I was quite happy then for having designed that particular experiment and having spent 3 hrs a few days before going through quite a few species to check which could peel easily. Alas, I was humbled when a student looked a wincy bored and when I asked, said that he wanted more blood and gore, having had the pleasure of going through a goat’s heart the week before (ahh, I see he is not a botanist).

Macaranga hypoleuca
Originally uploaded by lekowala.

Macaranga hypoleuca from the Euphorbiaceae (Rubber Tree family). In Greek, hupo - under, leukos-white. It was mesmerising, the bluish white hues as Josh and I looked up from ‘neath the branches.

Terminalia subspathulata
Originally uploaded by lekowala.

Terminalia subspathulata of the Combretaceae.

Corner (198 wrote “There is a tree of this species in the Singapore Botanic Gardens… … The fruits ripen and blow away about July and August”.

The tree in SBGardens is a real handsome and grand one, at Maranta Avenue.

Ref:
Corner, E.J.H. (1988). Wayside Trees of Malaya.Vol 1. The Malayan Nature Society, KL, Malaysia

Elaeocarpus grandis
Originally uploaded by lekowala.

Elaeocarpus grandis from the family Elaeocarpaceae. This trees of this genus are generally called Oil-fruit trees as the flesh of the fruits taste oily. The seeds or stones (as seen in the picture) of some species e.g. E. sphaericus are used as prayer beads in India and are known as Rudraksha beads.

Josh holds Rubber Seed
Originally uploaded by lekowala.

A take on prophylactics and natural family planning…

Nypa fruticans
Originally uploaded by lekowala.

Fruit of Nypa fruticans from the Subfamily Nypoideae, Family Palmae or locally known as the “attap chee”. The large fronds are used to tatch roofs of the attap huts. Many other uses including the commercial preparation of cigarette papers from young leaves (rokok nipah) and the preparation of brown sugar and the making of toddy (Whitmore, 1998).

Vehicles from the British North Borneo at Sandakan were once run on power alcohol made from Nipah sugar (Whitmore, 1998). “The large stands of Nypa remain a greatly underexploited resource for fuel alcohol” (Uhl and Dransfield, 1987)

This palm has an incredibly long fossil record and is considered one of the first palms. Fossils have been found in the Eocene and Miocene of Europe (Muller 1979 in Uhl and Dransfield, 1987).

Refs:

Muller, J., 1979. Reflections on fossil palm pollen. IV International Palynological Conference Lucknow (1976-77) 1:568-578.

Uhl, N.W., Dransfield, J., 1987. Genera Palmarum: a classification of palms based on the work of H.E. Moore, Jr. International Palm Society and L.H. Bailey Hortorium, Lawrence, KS.

Whitmore T.C., 1998. Palms of Malaya. 2nd Edition, White Lotus Co. Ltd., Thailand.

Cassytha filiformis
Originally uploaded by lekowala.

Cassytha filiformis belongs to the family Lauraceae which has members like the cinnamon and advocado. It is a parasite - note the foot like appendages penetrating into the woody stem of the host plant.

Its pantropical in distribution. Get more photos, references and DNA sequences from this site.

Cecropia peltata
Originally uploaded by lekowala.

This tree is a weedy pest from Central and South America. Botanists have a hard time figuring if its in the family Urticaceae, Moraceae or Cecropiaceae. The species is part of a complex (according to this site), so there are two other species that are very closely related, making the distinction between them slightly perplexing.

In its native habitat, Azteca (biting) ants inhabit the hollows of the tree and are thought to protect it from herbivores. Over here in Singapore though, the tree seems to do quite well without need of the ants. The flowers are borne on the finger-like spikes at the end of the long stalk near the crown of the tree.

Not to be a sensationalist but this plant is listed as ” 100 of the World’s Worst Invasive Alien Species” by the Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG) which is part of the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Photo taken at the Singapore Zoo.