I made a trip to Upper Seletar Reservoir area last Thursday during my day off. As usual, the place of full of wonderful variety of species, both plants and animals --- tiny ones. Unlike the earlier trip in August, there was no particular mission this time round, though I did re-visit the plot with the Staurogyne kingiana herb that motivated me to come by the last time.

For the first time, I had seen a truly wild Singapore Kopsia (Kopsia singapurensis) tree. Previous specimens seen were all cultivated ones and were relatively young trees. This particular one was a tall matured tree. I had walked under it many times in the past without knowing its existence. The flowers on the forest floor and those on the tree had given away its identity.

A special find was this woody climber with short stalk-like structures along its length high up among the trees. The fallen stalks had littered the forest floor. Indeed, it was their presence on the ground that prompted me to search high and low for their source. However, all the live specimens that attached to the climber were high up hanging from the surrounding trees. Upon close examination, the stalk looked like flower stalks with very tiny flowers emerging from the grooves along the stalk. It resembled those from a Gnetum species, likely to be Gnetum macrostachyum. Not a single leaf was visible on the woody stem as far as I could see.

In the earlier trip in March, I noticed a climbing fern that resembled the Miding Fern (Stenochlaena palustris). The region of its growing tip was much scalier than the Miding Fern. For this round, I was fortunate to find one with a single fertile frond. It was way above my height but I did manage to get some pictures. The sori (spore-bearing bodies) of this fern were dark brown in colour while those from the Miding Fern are orange in colour. The most likely candidate is a Teratophyllum species.

In all, I had added 5 new plants to my website from this trip (click on the image below to see more pictures of each plants).