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honymand

Singapore - a great place to see tropical conifers

honymand
11 years ago

Hi,

Had a short 4 day stay in Singapore, and of course made sure I got to (almost) all the interesting "botany spots". It's a great city for botanists, they have a motto like "City in a garden" or "The Garden City" or something like that, and sure enough everwhere you see beautiful parks and gardens. And the National Orchid Garden and the "Gardens by the bay" are simply world class for any botanist.

But trees! When arriving at Changi airport some of the first you see is a small stand of Agathis just before immigration. Thats right, a stand! Not just a tree in a pot or maybe 3 or 5 trees. I'd reckon something like 20-30 trees, each 8-10 m tall. That's pretty serious for indoor planting - never seen anything like that in any other airport.

And it goes on like that all the way through the city - lots of big, beautiful trees (mostly broadleaf, though).

But - there's something called "Gardens by the bay". Kind of a completely new type of botanical garden with (allegedly) the worlds larges and second largest glasshouses. The second largest is called the "Cloud forest" and in fact they've put a 35m high artificial mound inside mimicking a high montane forest. I found Agathis, Podocarpus, Cunninghamia, Metasequoia, Wollemia and more - not in dense stands, just 1-3 of each 6-12 m in hight, but still pretty impressive.

Theres also a small reserve of primary rainforest left (that's right, former military area, thats why it was never developed). You can go here and see mighty (broadleaf) trees, monkeys, monitor lizards, snakes, giant ants and the lot - and still be no more than 1 hour away from the nearest air-conditioned cafe with wifi coverage. Great.

Check out these pages: http://mirkwood.wikispaces.com/Cloud+Forest and http://mirkwood.wikispaces.com/Singapore+for+Botanists

Regards,

Hans Olav