Since I became more active again working on my website in late July, I had made a total of 3 trips to the MacRitchie Trails until now. The first trip was on 31 July while the second and third trips happened last week on 4 and 6 September respectively. My original plan for last week was to explore the Treetop Walk trail but decided to change my plan as I got a message that a relatively rare woody climber (Coscinium fenestratum) was flowering in MacRitchie area. I had yet to see the flowers of this climber in the wild.

The first attempt on 4 September was not successful due to heavy downpour. The rain came when I was about 30 minutes into the walk. As there was no sign of it stopping any time soon, I discontinued the walk and turned back.

Fortunately, I was able to allocate time to make another attempt in the same week on 6 September. It did rain again, but it was of a very short duration and much lighter compared to the one 2 days ago. Also, the rain came after I had checked out the woody climber. I was informed that the flowers were on the branches hanging high up on trees. It was impossible to get any decent pictures of the flowers from those branches due to the distance and the limitation of my camera. I was so delighted when I spotted a flowering branch at ground level relatively near to the boardwalk. With that, I got the pictures that I was aiming for.

The exploration lasted about 4 hours with 3 new plants added to my website. The Grammatophyllum speciosum (Tiger Orchid) was not part of the forest flora but was planted in the MacRitchie Reservoir Park before the entrance of the trails. I had already seen this orchid on a few occasions in the past but wanted to wait till I obtain the images of the flowers before adding it to my website. Wikstroemia ridleyi was a plant that I had been looking out for a long time since I first came across its images online many years back. It was quite easy to identify with its distinctive red fruits. I was surprised to learn that it was not a native species. The identification of Tabernaemontana corymbosa (Great Rosebay) was quite straightforward with its typical pinwheel shaped flowers. It was one of the 2 native Tabernaemontana species in Singapore, the other one being Tabernaemontana pauciflora.

Below were other noteworthy plants that I came across during this trip:

One mystery that remained unsolved was regarding a bundle of peanut-shaped fruits found on a small tree from the family Annonaceae. It looked like the fruits of Polyalthia angustissima showed in Yi Shuen’s Flickr page except for its colour. I did encounter the fruits of this species on one occasion at Mandai area in 2014, but the fruits were spherical in shape. That tree had the flowers on it as well. However, I was not able to find a single flower on the current tree that bore the peanut-shaped fruits. Another possible candidate was Xylopia caudata since their leaves looked similar, but I was unable to find any picture of Xylopia caudata’s fruit online. With no additional clue available, I had tentatively parked the images of this tree under Xylopia caudata page and will post an update when the mystery was resolved.

In addition, I spotted a flowering tree along the boardwalk. It was a tall tree with the flowers at the apex region. Hence, it was difficult to check on the detailed features of the flowers. At first, I thought it might be Vernonia arborea (family Asteraceae). This was ruled out after I enlarged the pictures of the flowers. While the pictures were blurry due to low resolution, it looked more likely to be a member of the family Apocynaceae. After hours of browsing pictures of Apocynaceae species in Singapore online, I suspected this tree might be a Parameria species instead.

The search had unexpectedly helped me to identify an unknow plant (Ceropegia woodii) that I saw in a community garden beside Zhenghua Nature Park on 21 August. This plant happened to be from the family Apocynaceae as well.