Pictures/Text/Brother Amin
On the way home after the morning run, we need to pass through a small rainforest in the park. I like this rainforest very much. Its trunks are thick and its canopy is like a canopy. The most peculiar thing is that almost every tree has different parasitic plants growing on it.
Parasitism usually gives people a feeling of getting something for nothing, such as parasites, or lying down and chewing on the old. However, parasitic plants bring beauty to people. It is a unique tropical scenery and gives the park a variety of charm.
Every time I go to Baisha Park, I deliberately walk through the path in the rainforest. On both sides of the path under the shade of green are unmodified grasslands, which are unevenly covered with different small trees. They are plants that grow freely. They come from seeds that fall from trees. Sometimes the wind blows seeds from elsewhere, or birds sow them.
I don’t know whether the big trees that form the rainforest were planted by our ancestors, or whether they were naturally formed. But the parasitic plants on the big tree must have formed naturally, either blown by the wind or brought by birds. There may be other reasons.
The most common parasitic plants on trees are ferns. There are many types of ferns, and I can only recognize a few of them, including the staghorn fern and the bird's nest fern. I have seen the others and may recognize them as ferns, but I don't know their names.
The most common ones are bird's nest ferns, which are found in various places in the park. They mostly grow on rain trees of different heights, near the roots of trees, or on the ground. But most of them still grow on trees.
The earliest known fern is the bird's nest fern. It is said that birds eat its seeds but are not digested, and are carried everywhere by the bird's feces, thus reproducing its offspring. That's why it's called the Bird's Nest Fern. But later I learned that this understanding was wrong, because ferns do not bloom and have no seeds. After searching, I realized that it actually reproduces by spores. As for the name Bird's Nest Fern, it just means that its shape is like a bird's nest, just like the name of Staghorn Fern, which means that it is shaped like antlers.
Ferns are actually a large and ancient plant family that once flourished on the earth. It once lived in the same era as dinosaurs. It can be said that ferns are the oldest terrestrial plants and rely on spores to reproduce. The roots of ferns are usually fibrous, and the stems are mostly rhizomes, growing prostrate or sideways, and a few are upright.
The leaves of ferns can be divided into large leaves and small leaves according to their origin and shape; they can be divided into vegetative leaves and sporophylls according to their functions. The vegetative leaves are mainly used for photosynthesis, and the sporophylls are mainly used for reproduction. Its leaves mostly grow from rhizomes and are mostly curled when young.
Early ferns were 20 to 30 meters tall. They began to appear on land in the late Silurian period. Today we call these earliest terrestrial ferns called Acrophysalis or light ferns. They have long disappeared. The largest ferns that can be seen now are only Callia fern is the only fern that can grow into a large tree, also known as "tree fern". It is also the only woody fern that has been discovered. It is extremely precious and has been listed as an endangered plant under first-level protection by many countries. It is known as a "living fossil".
There are about 10,000 kinds of ferns, mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical areas at medium and low altitudes. It is also called fern. Most of them are soil, stone or epiphytic, and the so-called epiphytic is parasitic. There are also a few that are hygroscopic or aquatic. They have a unique characteristic, that is, they like to live in a humid and warm environment, and the rainforest in Baisha Park just provides them with these conditions.
My understanding of fern mainly depends on its young teeth. Its young tooth buds are fist-shaped young leaves, and their shape is very interesting.
Among the wild vegetables in spring in Japan, there are many ferns, which are made from the young leaves of edible ferns. The fern is a bit bitter, but the young leaves are not bitter and are very tender and refreshing. The second way to identify it is to look at its sporangia and scale-like leaves.
There is also a precious fern growing on the trees in Pasir Ris Park, called the crown staghorn fern. The commercial price of this staghorn fern is at least more than 100 Singapore dollars. It is in its natural state. It is growing under the grass (in the herbal garden). I don’t know if it is because few people know it, or if they really know it, but no one picks it. In fact, as long as the plants you see are not planted by the Garden Bureau, you can still pick them. However, picking in the city must be carried out without harming the environment to ensure that the plants have room to continue to grow. Of course, such precious crown antlers are I don’t know if the fern was planted by the gardening bureau or if it grew on its own.
Then, let me randomly pull out some young bird's nest ferns at the bottom of the rain tree, take them home with a little moss, and plant them in the Feng pond at my house.... ..
Here are some pictures and descriptions
The weather is good and there is a sunrise.
This is a previous adventure hike, the one on the left is the fish fern
This is the rainforest path in Baisha Park
The trees are full of bird's nest ferns
The bird's nest fern seedlings growing together with moss at the lower part of the tree
It grew up to look like this.
I don’t know if these are ferns.
This is the bird's nest fern growing on the pavilion.
The parasitic plant hanging on the roadside tree outside the park, next to it is the bird's nest fern.
I picked up the bird's nest fern and planted it.
Planted on the wall of the Feng pool.