Today's weather - sunny
They say beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. How true! What is beautiful to me may not be beautiful to others. So this is the part where I say that my blog may not be appreciated by the mainstream audience but it doesn't bother me. I don't write to attract attention or please others, I wrote to document the things I love, the places I visit and the movies and tv shows I watched etc.
Back to the topic, these are some uncommon beauties that caught my attention.
The Dillenia flowers always catch my attention and this plant with D. excelsa or suffruticosa-like flowers is actually known as Dillenia alata (common name: Red Beech, Golden Guinea Tree). The leaves are smaller than those of D. suffruticosa and the leaf margins are not jagged.
Then there is the very rare and amazingly pretty Holmskioldia tettensis (common name: Purple Chinese Hat, Tahitian Hat Plant, Parasol Flower) which looked simply out of this world.
The Dillenia castaneifolia with red new leaves and less attractive flowers is kind of attention grabbing too.
This particular Poikilospermum has rather attractive green leaves but looks very mild compared to the ones I last saw in Sarawak in March 2011.
The last photo is that of the uncommon medium to large-sized tree Tetrameles nudiflora.
I don't know about other people but planting, especially planting of some really huge trees or beautiful plants, is therapeutic for me. I get a sense of euphoria when I am very happy with the outcome of my planting. Even when I first typed euphoria, I typed it as Euphorbia, which is a generic epithet of plants from the Family Euphorbiaceae.
So this is my documentation of the planting works I did at the Fragile Forest (FF). Some of the trees planted and transplanted were:
- Cerbera odollam
- Pentaspoden motleyi
- Shorea glauca
- Dipterocarpus species
- Kompassia excelsa
- Dracontomelon dao
- Memecylon caeruleum
- Garcinia species and cowa
- Kopsia flavida
- Dillenia excelsa
- Sygyzium gratum
- Shorea siamensis
It was so spectacular to see the Kopsia flavida leaves turned a vibrant red just days after the transplanting. The transplanting shock must have cut off the supply of nitrogen to the older leaves, which were translocated to the younger leaves, before they are shed to reduce transpiration.
There were many more trees and palms that I planted but this would come in a later post. Since seeing the few majestic Syzygium gratum trees in the nursery, I would often dream or envision planting it up in a grove at this specific location of the FF. This was my own miniature version of the famous Californian Red Woods, which I have never visited by the way. I may sound deluded but it is like a window to another world for me.
So when the planting was carried out, I told myself I have to capture the photos of this magical and monumental planting moment to remind myself of the simple but wonderful joys of my work. I am sure this exhilarating feeling of seeing a dream come true and alive right before our eyes is something that all passionate horticulturists can attest to. And for days on end, I couldn't help but gush to my colleagues about this beautiful grove of trees which would be seen by all who drives into or out of the FF car park. I think the view from the coach buses would be amazing.
There is still some work to be done here and I just need to embellish it further but I am proud of what I achieved thus far at this small and forgotten part of the garden.
