Pinanga simplicifrons - small and rather neat

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 ....

Cucurbit from Leyte

Patterned leaves of a Cucurbit vine (Cucumber family) from the Philippines.
Any ID ?

Surreal texture .... Alocasia melo

 

This is a rare small Alocasia from Sabah with textural leaves that feel like cardboard. It had been in cultivation since 1960s but the exact habitat was not known until sometime in 1990s where K.M. Wong,  A. Hayes and P Boyce found them growing on ultramafic river banks in the lowland of Sabah and eventually gave it a name in 1997. 

Below is the painting made by Mary Grierson from the specimen grown in Kew in 1960s.

  

The plant had been made available commercially but is still not very common. According to literature,  plants in the Australian botanical garden had been growing in free draining mixture with 75% perlite, 25% gypsum, epson salts, iron sulphate, lime dolomite and a little copper sulphate. Being a lowland jungle plant, high humidity and temperature is essential.

Ref: Curtis's botanical magazine, 1997, 82-86.

New species of limestone Alocasia

This is an as-yet un-named lithophytic species of Alocasia found growing on limestone slopes on the Philippines island of Samar.

 

Its distinguishing feature is the peltate leaf with small or no sinus (thats the dent at the top of the leaf blade).  The leaf blade is plain and smooth at the top with only the central midrib showing an indentation. Only a few specimens were seen, all growing on the steep slope in the shade.