Discover the treasures at Yosemite

(Left photo) At the Fallen Monarch, see how small I am compared to the fallen tree? They are a sight to behold.

(Right photo) Have you seen a tree with a tunnel? You'll find this Tunnel tree at Mariposa Grove - home to the Giant Sequoia trees. The tunnel was created to allow travelers to pass through in the olden days At Glacier Point, you get the paranomic view of the whole valley. Here you see the Upper Yosemite and Lower Yosemite Falls on the left of the photo. It feels like you are on top of the world. Time just stopped for you to take in the beauty!

In the photo above, you see the beautiful Vernal Falls - one of the many majestic falls in Yosemite. The best time to visit will be from April to July when the snow melts and it brings abundant water gushing through the valleys. You get to see the rainbows at the end of the waterfalls too!

Flemingia strobilifera

Remember the shrubs that were planted along the track leading to Chek Jawa? Some of you were asking me what they were.

I found the name of the plant on Ubin's volunteer blog. It's Flemingia strobilifera.



Also found a botanical illustration of the species on this website as well. Pretty isn't it?



This shrub, which is a legume, grows well in dry open waste areas. Most people will be attracted to the long droopy bunch of dried bracts. It has attractive leaves too, with their neatly arranged veins.

(Correction, 15 Sep 06) Earlier, I wrote that this plant is not a native plant- I am wrong! It is a native plant, occurring in open coastal areas in the region. Outside its original distributuion range, it is considered a global invasive species.

Thanks to Robert- the “MAN” on Pulau Ubin- for the correction. The plants that we now see in CJ is the progeny of those planted outside NParks office, which in turn were grown from seeds collected from Kampong Melayu. According to Hsuan Keng’s Concise Flora of Singapore, it is uncommon and specimens in our Singapore Herbarium were collected from Changi (by Ridley) and Blakang Mati, which is Sentosa. Margie had also pointed out the discrepancy when I had earlier included its origin includes East Indies, which she said would have included Singapore.

According to this website, it has medicinal uses in the Philippines, including using a decoction of the leaves for some sort of a steambath for women 2-3 weeks after childbirth. It also mentioned that the dried bracts are used for stuffing pillows and cushions. Wonder if such pillows will smell nice, but they will probably be nice to crush them to make a crisp noise.

Scaly Ball from the 'Long Kang'

Guess what Ranger Ismail and our contract worker found in this not so big drain on an afternoon two weeks ago? A young pangolin stuggling to get out of it! It's strange how the scaly ball ended up there but it was clearly in trouble. Ismail told me that it was raining earlier on that day, so there were some ruching water in this drain near the Senapang Track. And the pangolin was having difficulty keeping water from getting into its nose.

So Ismail and a few others bailed it out of the drain and later sent it to the vet for a health check. Everything looked well until my colleagues were about to release it in the forest later in the evening. It was pathethically weak- didn't move an inch and seemed to support itself up using its snout! So we decided to observe it for a day and see whether it will become better.

I saw it the second day and took the following pictures.

Using Nasir as the 'scale'.



See what I mean by it looking pathetically weak? The night before this pix, I heard it almost literally collapsed like a domino on its side from this position.



It didn't even curled up into a ball like most other pangolins we encountered.



So what happened to the pangolin? I wasn't there at the release later in the evening, heard Janet brought it near a termite nest and this guy tore it all up and slurped them up eagerly. A good sign indeed. Ask Janet to tell you more the next time you see her : )

You can read more about the pangolin here.

Fieldtrip To Pulau Ubin, 18 Jun 2006

Last Saturday, the CNRV went overseas! to Pulau Ubin... The last fieldtrip we had, which was to Changi heritage trees area was half a year back, so it was great to let our volunteers meet up with one another again.

Ria and Jacky were our nature guides to Chek Jawa on that day. We learnt a lot of things from these two very experieced guides. I believe there were many first-times for all of us- the first time we hold a live sea cucumber on our palms, see a sea star or touch the stinging cells of the carpet anemone.



We spent a good 1.5-2 hrs out there among the strangest organisms you can find on Earth! And to think these were almost buried a few years ago! Or should I say they may still be buried in the near future???



After the CJ walk, we had a quick lunch at Pak Ali's shop, where we "fighted" over the last few plates of the famous lotong before we headed to the Sensory Trail.

I was a little bit deterred by the noon heat at first, but glad we all went to the trail- many of us were "revived" by the many interesting herbs and plants planted along the trail.



Johnny was obviously more of his old self around plants than sea creatures as he happily told us the medicinal values and uses of the various plants.



Meru, who is also keen in medicinal plants also shared with us, so once again, we had two good guides!

Guess the sense of smell is really one of the powerful senses to engage when we lead guided walks because I remember the 鱼腥草 (translates to "Stinko Fish Herb") best... The crushed leaves of this herb smell like dead fish! Didn't take a pix though, was running away from the plant.

Check out the photos of the trip here!