Armed with the information from a friend (HKL), I had set off last week to Lornie Trail to check out Piper ribesioides which I had incorrectly labelled as Piper crassipes in the past. With the precise location and the description of the climber shared, it was not too difficult to accomplish the task and add a set of its pictures to my collections. Searching online for the images of Piper ribesioides had led me to 3 related publications [1-3]; 2 of them were on Piper species in Thailand by the same authors.

For this trip, I had entered MacRitchie Reservoir via Lornie Road, then moved on to Lornie Trail and eventually looped back along Chemperai Boardwalk to the same entry point. In all, I spent about 3.5 hours starting at 8:30 am. It was a relatively hot day apart from a very brief shower when I was walking along the boardwalk.

There were several flowering and fruiting forest plants spotted along the trail. The most special one was a bundle of fruits from the woody climber Uvaria hirsuta (Hairy Brown Uvaria) because this was a new plant for my website. I was told that this was a common climber in that area. Below were selected pictures of some of the more interesting plants sighted:

Not many creatures were spotted along the way. The only one worth mentioning was a well-camouflaged caterpillar spotted on a young Uncaria longiflora plant. It should be from the butterfly, Moduza procris milonia (Commander). Other host plants that I found these caterpillars previously were Timonius wallichianus and Guettarda speciosa. In the Butterfly Circle website, the 2 host plants listed were Timonius wallichianus and Uncaria canescens.

References:

[1] Anh LDN, Hung NQ, Thanh NT, Truong DV. Piper Ribesioides Wall., a newly recorded species for the flora of Vietnam. VNU J Sci: Nat Sci Tech 2021;37(2):14-17. | Read article |

[2] Suwanphakdee C, Simpson DA, Hodkinson TR, Chantaranothai PA. A synopsis of Thai Piper (Piperaceae). Thai Bull Forest Bull Bot 2020;48(2):145-183. | Read article |

[3] Suwanphakdee C, Simpson DA, Hodkinson TR, Chantaranothai P. Typification of Piper species (Piperaceae) in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand. Kew Bull 2018;73:33. | Read article |