After a very prolonged dry spell, the monsoon season took over - typified by thundery storms mostly during noons. Not the best time to roam in the wilds and least of all, the occasionally inundated swamp forests. I was actually hoping to capture some events of mass flowering, which happened only once every few years or more and in this freakish weather I would expect to occur.
In one of my hurried solitary forays in this soggy terrain, I encountered a rather rare plant - Pinanga simplicifrons, a very distinctive small palm with distinctive oblong undivided leaves forked at the end. This plant is distributed in Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra but I had never seen it available in commercial nurseries - which is a pity, given its small manageable size and very appealing foliage.
I managed to snap some pictures before the rumbling sky snapped me to my good sense and I got out of the swamp just as the first few droplets of rain descended ....
