Singaporean are blessed with numerous beautiful nature park that are dotted around our Island. These are either Primary / Secondary forest with walking paths built so that all can enjoy nature easily & safely.

While walking thru these parks in our tropical climate makes one sweat, I’m certain all these walking & sweating are perfect antitode to illness caused by lack of physical activity & too much exposure to airconditioning (especially those who are with desk-bound job). Besides, the green surrounding are good cure to tired eyes due to long hours working / playing on computer monitor.

Hence, I always make an effort to do walking in one of these nature parks weekly, encouraging sweating. And occassionally, enjoying new sights & interesting stuffs as well as numerous photographic opportunities along the way.

These are some shots I took while having a short walk (by my standard means about 1~ 2 hour leisure walk) at Bukit Batok Nature Park. I hope it may spur some interests in our Nature Parks.

Park Map. indicating where exactly you are in.

One of the several entrances to the Bukit Batok Park

Peaceful gentle winding walk amongst lush greeneries

I think most would have thought tropical places do not have figs, as they usually relate them to edible temperate climate figs such as those found in Mediterranean regions. But no, the tropics do have their own species figs, plenty of them!. Figs are important as they provides food to animals. While there may be 1 or 2 which are eaten by people, but they are not as tasty as temperate figs.

These, by my poor guess, is probably Ficus vasculosa.

Opening up this small figs reveals tiny flowers. Belonging to special group of plant under genus of Ficus, they produced flowers which are hidden inside the fig fruits. Hence we don’t see flowers on these plant, only fig fruits and hence the Chinese called them ‘wu gua guo’ meaning flowerless fruits. Figgies certainly do things quite differently.

Aonther interesting aspects is that there are tiny fig wasp that uses them as “nest” for reproducing themselves. And helping to pollinate the fig flowers while they are at it.

Nature is certainly fascinating. If have furthur interest our local tropical figs, you could get a copy of “A guide to the fabulous Figs in Singapore”. These easy reading guide was ompletely written by mixed group of plant enthusiasts should be available for $5.25 at all good bookshops.

A family outing in the park.

The beautifully strange Bat Lilies

Be intrigued by some more strange looking stuffs, Plant Galls. From what I googled, these looks like Hedgehog Gall. These abnormal galls are the works of insects and in each gall, a new insect will hatch. Normally (From what I read) they don’t caused any harm to the tree though it do looks pretty yucky to me. Come to think of it, the round, spiney & colored galls looks like a dessert called “Onde Onde” hehehe …

(Left) Heliconia “Sexy Pink”, (Right) Young Frond of a Fern

Well, there are certainly much more then what’s shown here. But I rather leave it to the reader to investigate furthur (if they wishes) for now.

Cheers!