Escapades at The Ridge

forest2,
originally uploaded by Hongyee.

Ah, the kent ridge episode. Yx noticed a lot of excavation going on at the hillside near the curvy road, so she proposed we go have a look to see if the Neps are getting affected. Obviously if those contractors are destroying CITES II protected plants I'm sure the AVA would love a tip-off. We wanted to get some seeds too, in case the Singapore locality of N.rafflesiana completely disappears - just a matter of time, in my opinion - and sending it to the ICPS seedbank would be a good idea.

So on Sat we trekked up Kent Ridge and weaved our way through HORRID huge spiderwebs and fallen trees at 6pm. Bad choice of timing, since it started to get dark, and during the return journey which took only 20 mins, we were half-running through the trees. Got to take my hat off her though - look at the pic. That's what we had to go through, and she rose up to the occasion with gusto in spite of her mini-skirt. We desisted on going through the axilla-height shrubs to reach N.rafflesiana though, I was in berms as well.

The place, fortunately, was quite un-molested. At least, the part where N.gracilis and N.ampullaria was situated. Will be going up somewhere next week or during the pub hols to check on the N.rafflesiana, since their location's very much nearer to the road. Fruiting season's over, but it was quite fun to see the many seedlings we saw a few months back grow into healthy teenage plants. Not to mention that the only natural Nepenthes hybrid we've ever found on Kent Ridge was growing strong! More pix coming up.