Vegetable curiosities abound in Singapore gardens

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32775, 27 November 1971, Page 13

Vegetable curiosities abound in Singapore gardens

(Article and photographs by, DERRICK ROONEY, who flew to Singapore as a guest of Qantas in a jiimbo jet on an inaugural flight from Sydney.)

“Tropical plantings—English style.” This is a note I scribbled as I left Singapore’s Botanic Gardens. As a descriptive phrase it is,probably evocative enough of the spirit of these beautiful gardens, but to convey the effect it should be/ padded out with a whole array of colours and textures.

Vegetable curiosities from all around the tropics are tucked away here and everywhere. One is the cannonball tree, a South American tree with hard brown fruit which bang together in a breeze with a sound like cannons—and the curious habit, shared by the cocoa tree, of producing flowers, and fruit directly from the trunk, not from the branches. There are also a sausage tree from Africa, with huge phallic fruit; a young banyan tree which has not quite finished' killing its host; ground orchids and epiphytic orchids; vines, lianes and creepers; huge fems; a giant chewing-gum tree; and flaming masses of bougainvillea.

| Commercial trees An area near the administration buildings is devoted to the trees of commercenutmegs, a teak tree, 1 rubber trees (the first rubber trees in Singapore and Malaysia were planted in the Singapore Botanic Gardens), oil palms, sago palms, coconut palms, and so on. Elsewhere are a hillside drenched with frangipani scent, an unrivalled collection of palms, 12 acres of virgin jungle, bush walks —and so the list goes on. Orchids are the übiquitous flowers of Singapore, and one of the glories of the Botanic Gardens. Just inside the main gates, and growing on a huge tree, is one of the finest specimens: a giant Grammatophyll.um speciosum, more than 100 years old. There is also, deep inside the gardens, a series of orchid houses which feature a bewildering array of orchids in pots, as well as a display of all the stages of orchidgrowing, from pollination to the fully-grown plant producing its first flowers. Something of the hygiene of an operating theatre surrounds the raising of new orchid seedlings. The seeds are started on an agar slope in a sealed glass container; when they are big enough (which may be a year later)

ABOVE: Singapore gardens abound in splendid trees, and this specimen in the Botanic Gardens is one of the finest. It is Dyera costulata, or the chewing-gum tree (so called because chewing-gum is made from the latex of this species), and is at least 150 years old it was already a mature tree when the gardens were founded in 1859. LEFT: The waterfall in the Jurong Bird Park, Singapore, is billed as the highest man-made waterfall in the world. It drops 100 ft down a sheer cliff (also man-made) at the head of a valley. BELOW: These happy tigers, displaying packets of Tiger Balin and Tiger Oil, greet visitors near the entrance to the Tiger Balm Gardens, one of Singapore’s tourist attractions. Carved out of a hillside, this is a curious mixture of whimsy, fantasy, and pure gothic horror. The exhibits range from a “torture chamber” depicting the Chinese version of hell to a giant New Zealand tiki.

they are moved into “family pots” containing several dozen tiny plants; later, they •are potted up individually. No soil is used in the growing medium, which consists of a mixture of charcoal and crushed brick. A fertiliser solution solves the nutritional problems, and the plants seem to thrive on this treatment.

of statistics: some 4000 trees have been planted, and many more shrubs; there is a staff of 100, including three veterinarians; a substance called canthaxanthin, a vitamin A derivative, is added to the food to give the birds’ plumage a'more vivid hue—and the whole thing cost $S5m.

Tropical horticulture has its peculiar problems, just as temperate horticulture does, In Singapore lightning, which kills trees, .is one; another is Singapore’s sticky red laterite clay soil; and a third is Singapore’s balmy climate.

Singapore island is just 85 miles from the Equator, and year-round has day temperatures in the eighties and night temperatures in the high seventies. The rainfall is 90 to 100 inches, fairly evenly distributed throughout the year; the rain is heavier between May and August, but there is no clearly defined monsoon season such as other tropical countries have. This means that the Botanic Gardens staff experience difficulty in persuading trees and plants

from monsoon areas to flower; and even trees from other parts of Singapore a few miles away are sometimes reluctant to flower in the gardens. The staff botanists have come up with a tentative solution to the latter problem—temperature. They believe that a difference of as little as 3 degrees Fahrenheit in the prevailing temperature can make the difference between flowering and not flowering.

The sheer lushness of growth is another problem, despite the poor soil. Canna lilies, perennials in Christchurch, are treated as annuals in Singapore—they literally grow themselves to death after about nine months. And banana trees, planted tight-months ago, are now 12ft high and carrying young fruit