DUXTON PLAIN PARK - PART 2

The previous post was on the fauna that I saw at Duxton Plain Park. This one is dedicated to the flora.

This is one of the few locations where this native creeper Geophila repens grows. Other places include Pearl's Hill City Park, Fort Canning Park and a state land along Orchard Road. This creeper has interesting heart-shaped leaves, white flowers and orange berries.

Nearer the main road Eu Tong Sen Street was a tall specimen of a Couroupita guianensis (common name: Cannonball Tree; Family: Lecythidaceae) with beautiful cauliflorus flowers. A link is provided below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couroupita_guianensis

DUXTON PLAIN PARK - PART 1

I used to manage this linear park and I was there recently. Surprisingly or should I say not surprisingly, there is still a lot of biodiversity in this often overlooked park.

There were lots of Common Grass Yellow fluttering amongst the plants e.g. Caesalpinia pulcherrima. In fact, I saw at least 3 grasshoppers and many scale insects on a grove of Pseuderanthemum reticulatum shrubs. Nearby, there was a cute orange ladybird which played hide-and-seek with me. When I tried to take photos of it, it would crawl over the leaf surface and when I flipped the leaf over, it crawl over it and this was repeated over and over until I finally managed to take these few shots before it disappeared from my view again.

Directly above the shrubs was an interesting spider. Frankly, I know nuts about their identity but this one spun a web with a huge white cross on its web which left me wondering why it did that? On the way out, I happened to see a Sunda Pygmy Woodpecker, which I posted before, on the trunk of a huge Pithecellobium dulce (common name: Madras Thorn Tree; Family: Fabaceae / Leguminosae). How cute! In fact, I was told that this is a common bird in our urban environment and can often be seen on trees in the carpark. However, I have never seen it before until these 2 posts. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a good photo of it.