Saw some interesting things today. Another fun jungle walk. I was at this place also last week. We had intended to explore the Sarawak-Kalimantan border and thought we had reached a point close to it but when I brought along my GPS today, it became clear we were still far from the border. In fact, the mountain range which we thought formed the border is still quite a ways from the actual border. That mountain range is on the Sarawak side!
I have so many photos from last week’s treks and today’s (plus another outing tomorrow) that I really do not know how to start writing about them or what categories I should use. Perhaps I’ll break them apart into orchids, palms, etc. Anyway, for now, here are some photos from today (09.12.26):
Photographing a small ground orchid, Nephelapyllum pulchrum.
Nephelaphyllum pulchrum. We found this at about 50 or 60 m elevation (the highest we got to according to my GPS was about 197 meters above sea level). So clearly this species isn’t just found above 300 m or 500 m asl.
Neuwiedia boornensis. White flowers, medium sized plant. There’s another different species in the area too with yellow flowers which is more commonly seen.
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The white flowers of Neuwiedia boornensis.
Neuwiedia veratrifolia. It was tres cool to find two different species of this unique genus growing here. They were some very healthy plants too!
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This I call the jelly fungus. Why? See next photo.
The fruiting structure is encased in a ball of jelly/slime before it emerges! This should go into my peculiar mushroom’s post a few weeks back!
Probably Salacca glabrescens or a related species. Locally known as buah salak (salak fruit). Also known as snake-skin fruit.
A colorful planarian or flat worm. It seemed to have been distressed or injured as there was a lot of slime and a bruised mid section.
When we got to the waterfall, the shoes went off, the flip flops came on and into the water I went. Well only my feet and legs anyway haha. It was really nice and relaxing. It had been raining so the water volume was higher than when we were last here a week ago.
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Too lazy to get up! I wanted to stay here longer but it was time to move on. A tiny little land leech actually got onto my foot fed itself into a squishy size. It was so small there wasn’t even an obvious wound that bled nonstop like normal leech bites. It must have gotten onto me some where along the trail. We were very glad to find no leeches here except for that one baby leech.
A small waterfall. I wish this was in my backyard!!!
While trekking through the jungle, I thought this tiny thing making its way up my socks was a leech (a micro leech! haha) as it moved exactly like one. It never got too far before being flicked off.
It turned out to be a tiny little caterpillar. Only found out when I zoomed into the pic on my computer. LOL
Last week I took nearly 300 photos. Today, I took over 400 photos and also saw a Coelogyne-like orchid but it had two spikes/inflorescences on one bulb! I’ve never seen any Coelogyne like that before! And finally saw flowering Claderia viridifolia! I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to see the flowers (especially in situ) forever! Last week, we only trekked to a point near a waterfall here. Today, we trekked much further and did about 6km on foot.
Maybe it *is* Coelogyne, I don’t really know as there were no flowers. But curious double spike/inflorescence! There were two seed pods on each.
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An assasin bug made out with a scorpion and this is their offspring. haha. Very interesting looking reduviid! I’ve never ever seen one like this before! Just tells you what kind of amazing species there are in the rainforests and how important it is to preserve the jungles and stop habitat destruction!
Well, I have a lot of photos to sort out! Will post and write about them as I get the time. I just don’t know how I should go about doing it, putting everything into one single photo heavy post will make the page too slow to load!
My photos from last week have been posted to Flickr, check them out! The link is at the top of the page, in the menu bar.
3 comments:
Amazing pictures of a world we must preserve! I will now look at your blog all the time! Very intresting for me as a orchid lover AND rainforest lover!!
Good work!
Pontus
The assassin bug does look very interesting! It certainly belongs to the tribe Harpactorini in the subfamily Harpactorinae. The large one is adult and smaller one is a nymph. I am currently working on this group of assassin bugs. Will update you later if I figure out its genus and species placement. -- Guanyang
Guanyang, how in the world did I miss your comment?? How's your research coming along?
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