I went to Upper Seletar area in search of the Staurogyne kingiana on 26 July as reported last week. Due to limited time on this particular Saturday morning, I only have time to roam around a small area. But it was already very fruitful for the few hours of outing.

It began with the sighting of a lone fruiting Dipterocarp tree planted along the road. A few winged seeds were found on the grass patch across the road where the tree was located. It took me a while looking high and low before locating the source of the seeds. Each seed had 5 wings and the leaf had a long pointed tip. Apparently, I had took some pictures of this tree, Dryobalanops aromatica, back in January last year at the Singapore Botanical Gardens but it was not fruiting then.

I finally got to see the fruits of the Vitaceace woody climber, Nothocissus spicifera. Unfortunately, the fruiting bundles were hanging on high up some trees and I could only get a glimpse of them from far. The most interesting discovery was a red longhorn beetle. It happened to flew across my path and landed at the back of a leaf. As it was rather small with elongated body, the first identity that came to my mind was a net-winged beetle, which is normally red in colour. I was happy to get it wrong since this was my very first picture of a red longhorn beetle. The other unusual beetle that I saw was a leaf-rolling weevil found on the leaf of a Syzygium myrtifolium. As it was rather windy at that spot, I was unable to get any good quality picture of this beetle.

Can you see a long-legged "spider" on the leaf of the Hairy Clidemia (Clidemia hirta)? The length of its body is about one-tenth the length of its legs. This long-legged creature is not actually a spider although it too has 8 legs, like the spiders. It belongs to another Order in the Animal Kingdom called Opiliones, or commonly known as Harvestmen. Although I was aware of the existence of Harvestmen in the wild for some years after having seen their pictures taken by others, posted in the Internet, this was the second time I saw a life specimen. The first time was a very tiny orange fellow seen crawling on a tree trunk in the early part of July at a park.

This was my second visit to the Upper Seletar area this year. The first trip was in March. I did not have time to explore the more swampy area this time round.