Last updated: 23 July 2016

In the same week in July 2012 when the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research [Note: Name changed to Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum from 1 April 2014] published their latest book, titled "Private Lives: An Expose Of Singapore's Rainforest", a pictorial book on the often neglected small wayside wild flowers in Singapore titled "Little Flower: Singapore Wild Flowers Up Close" was also released.

Back in late April 2012, the author (Jon Boon) of the Little Flower book wrote to me to acknowledge the help that my website had serve to keep him going with his book project. After a few email exchanges, he invited me to pen an introduction for his book since we share the same passion on plants. We have never met or spoken to each other all this while until after the book was published. It sounded strange but I guess life is always full of surprises.

Have you ever wonder what are the following 3 tiny wild flowers which are smaller than the size of a 5-cent coin? All three of them can be easily found around us.

This 159-page Little Flower pictorial book contained pictures of 70 flowers growing in the wild in Singapore, many of them often go unnoticed by most folks. His book reminded me of an old guide book titled "A Guide To The Wildflowers Of Singapore" published by the Singapore Science Centre back in 1985. That book had served me well in my initial quest to identify these often overlooked inhabitants in our midst. It was timely to have an updated pictorial guide book on these wild flowers after more than 25 years. I believe the book will come in handy for folks who always want to know the names of those little flowers that were seen so often but do not know what to call them.

Having the opportunity to write an introduction for a book for the first time was indeed a privilege that I would always remember. I finally got to meet the Jon Boon in July 2012 and he had kindly given an autographed copy of his book to me.