Fruiting Dipterocarps at Singapore Botanic Gardens

The dipterocarps are fruiting at the Singapore Botanic Gardens!

Heard the news from Angie when we met at Pulau Ubin last week. After the walk at Chek Jawa on Monday, I decided to make a trip to check out the fallen dipterocarp fruits.

The dipteraocarps refers to plants from the family Dipterocarpaceae. They are usually forest giants which can reach more than 40m, and some, such as the Shorea, can even reach over 80m! These trees are very important in the timber trade, and some species are endangered due to illegal logging and overcutting.


I started at the little patch of primary rainforest in the Gardens, and it did not take to long to find the patch of Meranti Melantai (Shorea macroptera) with lots of fallen fruits underneath.


Some of the fruits had even germinated!


Outside the rainforest, there were a few Meranti tembaga (Shorea leprosula) fruiting too.


These probably belongs to a Mersawa Merah (Anisoptera megistocarpa).


Near the Botany Centre, there were a few Resak Irian (Vatica rassak).

There were quite a number of fruits that looked like dipterocarp fruits, but cannot say for sure because the tree where they are found are not tagged.


Found these in the patch of rainforest.


This one too, was found in the rainforest trail.


These were found near the Tanglin exit, probably Hopea sp.


These were Hopea sp too, not sure if they belong to the same species as the one above.

There were a number of other non-dipterocarps fruiting too.


This looked like some kind of legume with the huge seed pods.


Found these in many areas in the rainforest trail, so suspect they could be from a climber.


These were found in the rainforest trail too.


These ones had little spikes with a big seed. Somehow they remind me of acorns.


These were found at the edge of the little patch of rainforest.