There are some special trees in the mangroves of Pasir Ris. We decided to have a look at them today.
Although there remains a great deal of trash on the shore, there were many seedlings on the shore too. I'm not sure if the seedlings were planted as they were regularly spaced apart.
Being somewhat smitten by
Bakau mata buaya (
Bruguiera hainesii) recently, we make the pilgrimage to the other
Bruguiera hainesii at Pasir Ris. The tree is still standing, and seems alright compared to
the last time I saw it in Sep 10. But today, I noticed there's another plant entwined among the lower branches of the tree.
The tree didn't seem to be flowering much today. As usual, I just blindly take photos of the canopy and go home to carefully search the photos for flowers. Aha, one flower and some buds.
On the ground, there were very few fallen calyx (the hard star-shaped part of the flowers), I saw less than ten. And no propagules. Here's two of the smaller yellowish
Bruguiera hainesii calyx with a larger red calyx of the more common Tumu (
Bruguiera gymnorrhiza). Alas, there's lots of litter on the shore too. Straws are particularly plentiful.
Another special plant is the precious
Pisang-pisang (
Kandelia candel). It still doesn't look too well, with only three leafy branches. This plant is Critically Endangered.
But it was good to see some buds growing on two of the three branches on this plant.
There were of course, many other common mangrove plants here. But we didn't have time to take a closer look at them. Because seriously frightening lightning started exploding around us. And massive rain clouds headed in.
We fled and got drenched before we reached shelter. Sigh. As it was close to sunset, we decided not to wait out the rain and headed home.
Among our other sightings at Pasir Ris: there is a very VERY long line of floats about 100m off the low water mark. The floats seem to stretch the entire length of the shoreline of Pasir Ris Park. But it was good to see that there were no barges on the shore and the
massive works on the shore seem to be completed.
However, erosion is still seen on some parts of the shore.
Another section of the shore with erosion.
Litter still accumulates on the high shore. This happens with every high tide, bringing litter floating in the sea onto the shore.
It's a pity we didn't get to spend more time in the mangroves. We were hoping to look up some of the rare mangrove trees (see
this previous trip) as well as the nesting herons.
And who knows, perhaps we would be as lucky as Debby?! Debby recently
shared on facebook that she saw "four otters trot into the waters from the river banks. One smaller otter was already frolicking in the water, so there were 5 otters in total - 4 pups and a mom. I followed them as they swam along the length of the beach some 100+ meters before they turned to laze for a bit in the mangrove". Wow!
