Tree Fern

Am always enchanted by ferns for their primitive and mathematical symmetry. The perfect crown of fronds of this Cyathea contaminans justly epitomized symmetry.  This is the giant tree fern of the Malayan montane forest.  It rises high above shrublets to more than 10 m tall and sways with racing mists. It colonizes base of slopes next to roads, old clearings and valleys. Photo was taken at start of the trek/road leading to Gunong Brinchang in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia around May day holidays in 2007.

Orostachys japonica

Sempervivum? No, Sempervivum is not found beyond Asia minor and the Caucasus. Other genera of crassulaceae from Japan are Orostachys, Sedum i think this is an Orostachys. This compact rosetted succulent was found growing on rocks near the sea at Utoro, Hokkaido, Japan. Orostachys are biennials - they die after flowering in the 2nd year. The intense red and extreme clustering of leaves in the top photo is an indicative sign of emerging stem inflorescence in autumn. There are few accompanying plants in the harsh rocky habitat besides Phedimus kamtschaticus (Sedum aizoon ssp kamtschaticum), Artemisia sp and some annual members of the compositae. I can imagine the succulent rosette of leaves buried under at less a foot of snow! Based on internet photos and description from Flora of China, i think it is O. japonica. It is a widespread species from Eastern China extending to Japan, Korea and Russia.

Phedimus kamtschaticus

This picture was taken in-situ when i went on a 2 weeks vacation (. No, i did not travel to an exotic place called Kamchatka in the far eastern Russia. It was taken at Utoro near Shiretoko national park at Hokkaido, Japan. Frankly, i never heard of this small town. It serves as a getway to the Shiretoko national park and cruiseliners take tourists out to tip of Shiretoko peninsula (Cape Shiretoko) from this point. It is growing on coastal rocks around cruiseliner pier in full sun. I lift this description from Flora of China 8: 218–221. 2001.

Phedimus kamtschaticus (Fischer) ’t Hart in ’t Hart & Eggli,
Evol. & Syst. Crassulac. 168. 1995.
堪察加费菜 kan cha jia fei cai
Sedum kamtschaticum Fischer & C. A. Meyer, Index Sem. Hort. Petrop. 7: 54. 1840;
Aizopsis kamtschatica (Fischer) Grulich; Sedum aizoon Linnaeus subsp. kamtschaticum (Fischer) Fröderström.
Herbs perennial. Rootstock branched, thickened, woody. Stems mostly simple, ascending, 15–40 cm, sometimes papillate. Leaves alternate or opposite, rarely 3-verticillate; leaf blade oblanceolate, spatulate, or obovate, 2.5–7 × 0.5–3 cm, base narrowly cuneate, margin apically
sparsely serrate to crenate, apex obtuse-rounded. Inflorescence terminal. Flowers unequally 5-merous. Sepals lanceolate, 3–4 mm, base broad, apex obtuse. Petals yellow, lanceolate, 6–8 mm, abaxially keeled, apex acuminate and mucronate. Stamens 10, slightly shorter than petals; anthers orange. Nectar scales subquadrangular, minute. Carpels erect, equaling or slightly shorter than petals, adaxially gibbous, base connate for ca. 2 mm. Follicles stellately
horizontal. Seeds brown, obovoid, minute. Fl. Jun–Jul, fr. Aug–Sep.
Rocky slopes; 600–1800 m. Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Nei Mongol [Japan,
Korea, Russia].

It is so neat and nicely position that on first impression i thought it was planted. Anyway, there are annuals in planted troughs. More of this species growing on other less accessible rocks around that area. They survived winter dying down to a rootstock. I reckon the place will be snow covered for at least 4-5 mths.

Mexican Poppy

We were trying to find a short cut to the bank of the Irrawaddy river at Mandalay, Myanmar. On the map it seemed easy enough to cross several blocks and we will get there. Actually, it was easy enough... but we were not prepared for the reality. It cuts through a very poor part of town, full of shacks assembled from any materials that the dwellers can lay their hands on. On top of that... there's no river view! We were greeted with an earthen great wall - a levee that was about 10 m above the shanty town! As i was scaling the dusty loose earth i couldn't help imagining a raging river laden with flood waters during the wet monsoon threatening to breach the levee and wipe out the shanty district. Walking on top of the levee i saw some bamboo dwellings build on bamboo rafts with various buoys on the swallows of a drying river. Some 20 m away i spotted a very distinctively sliver white pricky plant (above) facing the drying river. It had beautiful bright yellow poppy-like flower. My instinct was to look for seed pods but it was a young plant with the first flowers. Its existence would be ephemeral given its loose footing on a levee. Sad thoughts aside..would you agree that this plant should deserve a place in a dry garden:
After some research, it is a well-known weed Argemone ochroleuca from Mexico and had a string of common names like Mexican poppy, pricky-thistle and so forth and has naturalized to most of the seasonally dry areas of the world. Despite its weedy status, i was looking forward to grow this plant but getting this weed proved elusive. Today with luck, i am given a handful of seeds thanks to my friend who had just visited a semi-desert area in India. Okay, luck was secondary, i actually prep my friend with a list of what to look out for when he's there!

Water Clover

There is always something new when you go on vacation. I went on a 4 day trip to Thailand in mid-January 2008 to visit friends, plant market and orchid show at Chantaburi. We stopped by a friend's fruit orchard and found in a drying up pond a patch of beautiful Marsilea crenata or water clover. Typically, the leaves are well spaced out and carried on runners on inundated muddy flats. In this photo, it covered the muddy ground with a unusually tight mat of leaves together with a few arrow shaped Ipomoea aquatica* leaves sticking out.

It may not occur to a plant enthusiast that Marsilea is a fern. Unlike other ferns, spores are not borned on the underside of a frond but inside a bean like structure. The spore-bearing leaf has evolved into a special structure called sporocarp:

Just the day after i saw M. crenata in drying-up pool, i found another species M. drummonii growing in a plant enthusiast's collection. This triggered a recollection of Moran's essay**. He wrote of early Australian explorers sustenance on improperly prepared meal of nardoo (M. drummondii) sporocarp which resulted in poisoning and death. The photo below shows M. drummondii with silvery white hairs on its new leaves together with M. crenata. The hairs on top of having underground rhizomes may be an evolutionary adaption to protect young leaves from intense sunlight as M. dummondii is found on harsh seasonally climate that alternates between drought and floods. Interestingly, i found out that M drummondii is native to Thailand and absent from aseasonal Malaysia & Singapore.

*By the way, i. aquatica is 'kang-kong' a staple vegetable in found in south east asian cooking. And a popular dish is sambal kang-kong.

**The Natural History of Ferns, Timberpress by Robbin C. Moran is a wonderful read. It contains an unparalleled collection of highly readable essays on different aspects of fern life, evolution, cultural history, interesting facts and adaptations.

Iridescent Begonia

A cover photo got to be good right? Here it goes, Begonia pavonina. An iridescent begonia endemic to the highlands of West Malaysia. Iridescence is caused by refraction of light and it is probably best represented in cultivation by "blue" ferns - Pyrrosia sp or fern-allies - Selaginella sp.
Okay it is not really as exciting, the flash from my camera just manages to get it from the right angle and the former picture captures the full glory. The above picture captures an average plant. To some extend, the amount of iridescence depends on intensity of light on the plant, age of leaves, genetics ...

Yellow Impatiens

This is probably the most beautiful impatiens species endemic to West Malaysia. I. oncidioides is a well documented species found along riverine forest in the montane zone of the Main Range. It is a lush herb that grows not too far from flowing water along earth banks in dappled shade.
Raymond Morgan mentions in his book Impatiens (Timberpress, 2007), that hybridizers have tried to cross this species with New Guinean species to produce good solid yellow flowers... but their efforts are not rewarded. The yellow genes appear to be recessive.

This species is not threaten on account of numerous seedlings and young plants. It even survived grass cutting activity along the trail. But it will not survive destruction of habitat unless transplanted to a suitable montane riverine valley. M. Henderson described this species being common in Cameroun Highlands and Fraser Hill in his 1960s book Common Malayan Wildflowers, but personally i have not seen it at Fraser Hill.

Other companion herbs include an iridescent "blue" begonia by the name of B. pavonina and gesneriads.

A Hoya?

This is another shy to flower vine. It took a me long time for me to identify it. This leafless green vine is not a hoya, a dischidia or a cynanchum. I first saw it twining over scrub on limestone cliffs at Raleigh beach, Krabi. The impression then was dodder (Cuscuta sp), a parasitic vine commonly found on mangrove and coastal vegetation. But it is too green and has a milky sap, and that helps me to narrow down to milk-weed family (Asclepiadaceae). Again i found it in Halong Bay, Vietnam... twining over Euphorbia antiquorum and other Dracaena. With luck it was in flower and i'm now able to narrow it down to Sarcostemma brevistigma. Unlike Hoya and dischidia, it would never really find a place in collections for lack of flowers and its vining habit. Well it is bless with robustness and a very wide distribution range from India, Nepal, Myanmar and all the way to Thailand, Vietnam and Southern China and is unlikely to face extinction.

Impatiens chinensis

It was a painfully slow 24 hrs ride from Hoi An to Dalat. I left Hoi An in the evening to arrive in Nha Trang around dawn. I caught the bus to Dalat at round 9 am traveling at 50 km/hr through rather degraded pastureland. The bus snaked up to the Dalat plateau after lunch. The montane coolness was revitalizing and refreshing; pine plantation started to appear. From the window, i caught a glimpse of delicate pink flowers near ditches or drainage channels. Unfortunately, the bus was not going to stop... However, i was lucky my guide brought me to a less frequent small waterfall the following day to see the dalat sights. Here i managed to photograph this beautiful Impatiens chinensis in situ. It was then approaching the dry season, there were no mature seed pods to be seen.

Trying to pin a name to this species drawed a blank until 2006 when a Taiwanese nurserymen identified it as I. chinensis. It was said to be common weed of Southern China in marshy areas. A websearch yields couple of photos of this species but the flowers are smaller, less symmetrical and the color is inferior. If you can confirm; or suggest another identification, would like to have your comments.

Impatiens from Vietnam

I was at Border's this weekend. Wasn't having any expectation of new interesting plant books on the shelf. Browsing through familiar titles i came across a new title Impatiens by Raymond Morgan (Timberpress). The author covered impatiens from Africa, Masdagascar, Indian sub-continent, Southeast Asia and China. Was very tempted to buy it but after the initial excitement... i realized that most species (with pictures) are quite well known. Christopher Grey-Wilson has devoted a monograph - Impatiens of Africa. So i am encouraged start-off with a few impatiens i saw during my travels around Southeast Asia.


I chanced upon this impatiens at Cat Ba Island, Halong Bay during my Vietnam trip in Nov 2005. This perennial balsam was found growing from peaty humus pockets on razor sharp eroded karst. It grows to around 50-80 cm tall from the base and have very pale pink or white flowers. It has a spindle-shaped basal stem up to the first side-branch. Wild plants of Halong Bay identified this as I. verrucifer. Flora of vietnam gives a distribution to include Ninhbinh, Quangnam and Phanrang on the mainland. Athough the plant is flowering vigorously, there is no developing or mature seed pods. I was not sure if November is the flowering season; maybe it is just opportunistic flowering when water is available. That year was probably an anomaly with typhoon bringing rains later and further north. October till April is normally the cool season and past typhoon season. Other plants that share a similar eco-niche are Euphorbia antiquorum, Sacrostemma sp (milk weed stem-climber), Dracaena cambodiana (Yucca-like), Drynaria sp (fern), Stephania sp (climber with peltate leaves & has a tuber).

Mystery Crassulaceae

This plant is a real pain to identify but only those in Singapore will have this problem. Let me explain... it appears on sale infrequently, it looks like a Kalanchoe, and like kalanchoe it can be started easily from bits of stem or broken leaves, but nobody has seen the flowers. Being right on the equator, okay to be exact just 1° north of the equator, there's no short days of autumn to trigger flowering.

During my recent trip to China, i spotted a nice pot of flowering kalanchoe... but something is not right. The vegetative parts looked like the kalanchoe i know from Singapore but the flowers are wrong! The flowers showed stronger affinities to Sedum. While trying to read up on Chinese plants which i saw during the trip... i come across a photo of the above in The Garden Plants of China by Peter Valder, Timber Press naming it Sedum spectabilis. Going by a more authoritative reference it is Hylotelephium spectabile per Flora of China vol.8. It is found all the way from Eastern China to Manchuria and Korea.

So much for all the mystery... it is just a non-flowering poor specimen of a highly popular ornamental plant introduced to Europe and N. America.

Stonecrop - Orostachys

This is a surprise for me find to a native succulent in urban China near Shanghai. I first spotted it on a rooftop at Zhujiajiao, a water town just an hour plus from Shanghai. It is growing out between overlapping roof tiles. It is the tall inflorescence that caught my attention. The rooftop mirrors its native ecology - nutrient poor environment, lack of competitive plant species, unhindered exposure to full sun and excellent drainage amongst rocks. The roots anchor steadfast to some dried moss; there is no competitors on this rooftop niche. The following day during excursion to Suzhou, i noted more localities - in LiuYuan (Lingering Garden) and HuQiu (Tiger Hill) on pre-refurbished rooftops.

After doing some research at Shanghai, Fuzhou road bookstores... i manage to narrow it down to Orostachys fimbriatus. It is common plant, use in traditional medicine with poisonous properties... and i quote this from Flora of China 8: 206–209. 2001.

Orostachys fimbriata (Turczaninow) A. Berger in Engler & Prantl, Nat.
Pflanzenfam., ed. 2, 18a: 464. 1930.
瓦松 wa song
Cotyledon fimbriata Turczaninow, Bull. Soc. Imp. Naturalistes Moscou 17: 241. 1844; C. fimbriata var. ramosissima (Maximowicz) Maximowicz; Orostachys fimbriata var. grandiflora F. Z. Li & X. D. Chen; O. fimbriata var. shandongensis F. Z. Li & X. D. Chen; O. jiuhuaensis X. H. Guo & X. L. Liu; O. ramosissima (Maximowicz) V. V. Byalt; Sedum fimbriatum (Turczaninow) Franchet; S. fimbriatum var. ramosissimum (Maximowicz) Fröderström; S. limuloides Praeger; S. ramosissimum (Maximowicz) Franchet; Umbilicus fimbriatus (Turczaninow) Turczaninow; U. ramosissimus Maximowicz.

Rosette leaves linear, short; appendage white, suborbicular, cartilaginous, centrally spinose, margin fimbriate. Stem leaves linear to lanceolate, 1.9–3 × 0.2–0.5 cm, apex spinose. Flowering stem 10–20(–40) cm. Inflorescence racemose or basally branched and conical, dense, 12–25 × 10–20 cm; bracts linear, apex acuminate; pedicels to 1 cm. Sepals oblong, 1–3 mm. Petals red or white, lanceolate elliptic, 5–6 × 1.2–1.5 mm, base connate for ca. 1 mm, apex acuminate. Stamens shorter than or equaling petals; anthers purple. Nectar scales subquadrangular, apex ubemarginate. Follicles oblong, apical beak slender, ca. 1 mm. Seeds numerous, ovoid, minute. Fl. Aug–Sep, fr. Sep–Oct.

Rocks on slopes, house roofs, mossy tree trunks; below 1600 m (to 3500 m in Gansu and Qinghai). Anhui, Gansu, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Zhejiang [Korea, Mongolia, Russia].
This species is used medicinally.

China is actually fairly rich in crassulaceae, with 233 out of 1500 species. With more species in Sedum, Rhodiola, Sinocrassula, Hylotelephium. So... keep your eyes open when you go on holidays.