CASSIA x NEALIAE AND VICTORIA AMAZONICA

I have not written for a while since the post on the flowering Tabebuia chrysantha but when I do, it's because there was some flowering phenomenon again in May 13. 

This time round, it was located at the Golden Garden area near to the Victoria Lily pond. It is a part of the gardens that is not often visited right now by many public visitors because of its obscure location partially hidden by the construction hoardings around the Children's Garden.

A row of flowering Cassia x nealiae trees are planted on the outer edge of the footpath around the pond. Known commonly as the Rainbow Shower Tree, this National Tree of Honolulu is supposedly an ornamental hybrid between the more common yellow flower Cassia fistula and the pink flower Cassia javanica. At its flowering peak following a hot and dry spell, the tree may shed all its leaves and be covered with clusters of pendulous pinkish-red floral buds and yellow-pinkish flowers.

Other than the Rainbow Shower Tree, I saw the pink flowers of the amazing Victoria amazonica water lily, which is the largest water lily in the Family Nymphaeaceae. Once named after Queen Victoria, this Giant Water Lily is native to the Amazon River. The flowers first open white at night and emit a strong fragrance that attracts its pollinators - the night beetles. After pollination, the flowers turn pink by the next night. Another interesting feature of this water lily is the large round leaves which may reach up to 3 m in diameter. The rolled up young leaf is heavily covered with spines on its reddish underside to protect itself against fishes and other creatures e.g. terrapins, that try to feed on it. As the leaf slowly unfurls itself and grows, it becomes stiffer and tougher. Hence, it is not uncommon to find photos of the giant leaves supporting a baby or child at its center because they have been documented to support more than 100 kg when fully grown.

TEPUIS

Today's weather - sunny

I read an interesting article "Ecosystems that thrive in Amazon's High Places" on page 13 in The New York Times in this morning's TODAY.

Tepuis, which are known as tabletop mountains because of its flat plateau and steep cliff faces, located in the northern Amazon rain forest emerge thousands of meters from lowland forests and support a high biodiversity of flora and fauna such as lizards and frogs. Like mountains in the sky, it is a natural wonder how these are formed in the first place and how the animals get up there.


Unlike the formation of natural mountains such as the Andes which result from the collision of continental plates 25 million years ago, tepuis were hypothesized to form about 70 million years ago as layers of rock with sand at the ocean bottom were raised to become dry terrestrial land and over time, erosion removed the sand and exposed the rock beneath. Interestingly, it was found that the many faunal species living atop the tepuis are not found anywhere else and yet appeared to be closely related to each other, bringing forth the conjecture that they may share a common ancestral lineage.

According to recent research studies on 4 species of tiny tree frogs that live on these tepuis, evolutionary biologists are able to use their DNA molecular clock and compared them to their closest lowland relatives to determine how long ago their common ancestor existed before it accumulated new mutations and diverged into separate species. It was discovered that the common ancestor of these 4 frog species lived about 5.3 million years ago, and not 70 million years ago. This means there is a possibility that the frogs scaled up the colossal cliffs to the tepuis and became separate species only several hundred thousand years ago.


Unfortunately, global warming has driven the mountain-dwelling species to higher altitudes but they can only go as far and as high as the top of the tepuis. I am ending this post with a quote from Ms Patricia Salerno, the lead evolutionary biologist, from the University of Texas, involved in the study:

"The tepui frogs may have been able to scale cliffs that would make mountaineers blanch. But even they can't climb into thin air."

LEGENDARY AMAZONS (杨门女将之军令如山)

 Today's weather - sunny

This is the umpteen time they are making a movie based on the famous female Yang warriors who were a bunch of widows whose patriotic General husbands died in battle and they took over to defend the Song Dynasty from being invaded by their rivals.


Produced by Jackie Chan and titled "杨门女将之军令如山", this movie stars Cecilia Cheung as the lead character, Richie Ren, Liu Xiaoqing, Zheng Peipei, Kathy Chow and so on. The former was recently plagued with unfavourable and widespread news coverage of her high profile marriage collapse with Nicholas Tse. In fact, she is starting to look quite gaunt from her earlier movies. She showed off a lot of wide-eyed glares and crying onscreen but I wasn't convinced of the emotions displayed.


Overall, I found this movie rather lame, comical and  in fact amateurish. I expected a lot more from this movie since I have seen some really good productions on such period dramas. There was quite a bit of gore where a few of the female yang warriors were killed off one after another in battle. The recent chinese movies that I watched seemed to get from bad to worse. I do not know if it was intentional, but there were frequent sniggers coming from the audience as they were also caught off guard by some of the funny scenes.


I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone. Instead, I prefer the 2001 Taiwanese tv version "Lady Warriors of the Yang Family" (杨门女将之女儿当自强) starring some of our local artistes and the more recent 2006 China tv serial "Young Warriors of the Yang Clan" (少年杨家将). Two links are attached below for reference:

• http://www.spcnet.tv/Taiwanese-TV-Series/Lady-Warriors-of-the-Yang-Family-review-r1665.html
• http://www.crunchyroll.com/library/Young_Warriors_of_the_Yang_Clan_2006

VICTORIA AMAZONICA

I took these photos in February 09 and forgot about it until recently when I attended a course and was reminded of this amazing aquatic plant Giant Waterlily from the Nymphaeaceae Family which includes the numerous waterlilies.

Although the specimen is not as beautiful and did not reach the leaf span as the one in the last photo taken from the web, it is still impressive. It was said that this plant can take weights up to about 40 kg on its leaves.

To prevent itself from being eaten by aquatic fauna like terrapins, the plant creates an armour of thorns and spines on its leaves and flowers. For more information on this plant, check out the link below:

http://www.kew.org/plants-fungi/Victoria-amazonica.htm

EUCHARIS AMAZONICA

The Amazon Lily from the Amaryllidaceae Family is not a new plant but neither is it common.

I planted quite a bit of them at the Home Garden but they were all gone. These photos were taken at the Singapore Botanic Gardens near the Visitor's Centre.

The monocotyledonous leaves with parallel veins were so healthily green and contrasted sharply with the white flowers.