I was privileged to be allowed a sneak peek at the amazing native mangrove seedlings that have been magically sprouted at
Uvaria Tide.
Here, with love and a 'secret sauce', a wide variety of mangroves trees are being grown from Singapore's own native stock. Above are lots of sprouting
Bruguiera parviflora, a mangrove tree that is uncommon on our shores.
Thanks to Chua JC for the invitation, I saw lots of lovingly tended mangrove babies. If I remember correctly, these are baby
Sonneratia ovata. So cute!
And these are
Sonneratia caseolaris.
These are tiny
Brownlowia tersa seedlings coming out of their brown seed coat.
And
Ceriops zippeliana.
A really rare plant is
Kandelia candel. This one is all grown up already.
It's astounding to see bags and bags of
Lumnitzera babies. I have heard that it is impossible to propagate these. Where others have failed and given up, Uvaria Tide keeps going until they get it done.
And of course the most precious of all, baby
Bruguiera hainesii! All these successes take years of trials and patient care with appropriate nutrients (the 'special sauce').
Besides growing native mangroves, Uvaria tide also grows native forest dipterocarps!
After years of experimenting and refining growing techniques, and much labour of love, the good folks at Uvaria Tide including Boo Chih Min and JC Chua are now able to offer lots of native plants for sale! These are taken from plants IN Singapore, and thus these baby plants help preserve the genetic stock of Singapore's own mangrove biodiversity. No reason now to buy mangroves from Malaysia or Thailand! These come from different genetic stock and may mess up our native mangrove stock which are already under so much pressure.
Can mangrove plants be grown successfully in my garden? Don't they need seawater?
Yes, mangrove plants can do well in a typical garden. They don't need seawater! Uvaria Tide can recommend suitable plants for your garden and pond.
Sadly, Uvaria Tide will be affected by
plans to relocate 62 Lim Chu Kang farms in 2017. Hopefully, their good work can continue.
Visit Uvaria Tide
on facebook
You can also contact them
Boo Chih Min
uvaria@hotmail.com
Chua Jit Chern
cjcspark@live.com
Your support for Uvaria Tide will help them continue their good work in this rather thankless but important task of protecting Singapore's genetic stock of native plants!
More about Uvaria Tide and their stock in this
previous blog post.
