Yes, today is the 50th birthday of Singapore. Happy Birthday, Singapore!!!

At the eve of the national day, I dropped by the new extension of the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve that was opened only in December last year. I came by in October last year but this new extension was not ready then. Although it was around 8 am when I arrived, the lighting was dim due to the hovering dark clouds. Sure enough, after just a couple of photographs, the sky came pouring. This gave me the opportunity to visit the cafeteria (called Mangrove Kitchen) to have a cup of coffee while waiting for the rain to go away. Fortunately, the rain did stop after 15 minutes.

The most interesting find from this trip was the Clerodendrum Leaf Beetle (Phyllocharis undulata). There were many of them around the area, especially on the Seaside Clerodendrum (Volkameria inermis) at different spots. Based on their exclusive presence on this plant, the damage done to the leaves and the presence of the nymphs, there was no doubt that the Seaside Clerodendrum is the host plant of this beetle. The beetle might be introduced as I had not seen it in the past in this area. The last time that I saw adult beetles (Podontia affinis) and nymphs in the same host plant was on a Kedongdong shrub (Spondias dulcis) in July 2012. The spread was limited to the few shrubs and I had never seen the beetle again on other Kedongdong shrub elsewhere since then. Time will tell whether the appearance of the Clerodendrum Leaf Beetle is also a transient phenomenon.

From this trip, I added 2 new plants to my website --- Umbrella Sedge (Cyperus eragrostis) and Pelong Tree (Pentaspadon motleyi). The 2 Pelong trees seen were cultivated and they were young trees. However, the shorter one actually had flowers on it while the taller one had a name tag on its trunk. I had deduced that the flowering one (with no name tag) was the same plant based on the similarity of the leaves from the 2 trees. I tried to match the flowers through Internet search of Pentaspadon motleyi. Surprisingly, no one had posted its flowers. The one that came close was a dried flower picture from the Asian Plant website.

As for the lone Umbrella Sedge, it was located at the base of the shorter Pelong Tree. In wetland area like this one, sedges were all over the place and many different species looked similar to one another. This one happened to look rather different from the rest, which caught my attention. The second part of its name "eragrostis" probably indicated the similarity of its fruit (spikelet) arrangement pattern when compared to that in the grass genus Eragrostis.

It was around 11 am when I finished exploring the new extension of the Reserve. The sky was still cloudy. Since it was already closed to noon, my usual cut off time for such trip, I decided to head home and leave the exploration of the main Reserve to another day.