Mulu 2 - Plants, Fungi and A Little More..

Hi, here comes another picture post. It may not be of interest to many since it involves little humans and many plants. Not so many, but more green than brown (humans). Enjoy, if it delights you. Most of these pictures were taken in different parts inside of the Mulu National Park itself, unless otherwise stated.

"test tis, one, two.... (there can't be three)"

Fruity-Tutti

Bola!

Beany

Furballs!

The following few pictures were taken at the fringe of a heath forest that we visited after a brief visit to a Penan village.

I was baffled when I saw this.
What exactly are these fruit?
Nope, I never found out either, any words of wisdom?
A failed flash photo that shows some detail but shrouds 50% of the subject. Moron. Haha

*Back in the Park*

Low-hanging fruit? *snip*

Fungi Junky
The colours in this picture are truer to the actual scene.
Quadrabolus =p

*takes a step back*
Berries on a flower?

*takes a step back*
Badly out of focus.

Geez

*takes a step back*

The plant

*rushes forth*

Fruit-free flower
Out of Focus, Fruit-free Flower, F....luffy fishballs.
Fakey snakey

The following photographs were taken en route the hike to Clearwater Caves, which I undertook with Cheryl as Tse Yuen was too much of a lazy fat ass to follow the arduous journey and preferred to stay in the room munching away on our potato chip supplies. Haha, nah, the guy's hiked there once
Some twin fruit/nut that penetrated a leaf and hung around. Solid cherries? Penetrative nuts. wooo..

See that lil thing on the right? That's Cheryl beside a huge strangling fig. It big. BIG. Cheryl's probably about 1.62 m.

Just for entertainment comparison, up till the top of the picture, it's about 6.8 Cheryls, which would come up to approximately 11.1 m tall. Hehe, of course, the fig extends way beyond the picture, so this picture maybe measures less than half of the fig tree? Maybe half, I can't tell. As it was an emergent tree in the canopy, it's too tall to see the top properly because of the scorching sunlight.

Rattany Barney

Spider's web? Or some other insect nesting? Ants perhaps.. Don't see anyone there.

Furry Orange lil Ballseys

Spot the fruit(s). Hanging reddy, dangling greenie.
I loath myself for being lazy and not getting all the focusing right.
purpur karre frawer (use bahasa baku, helps)

Blooming Amorphophallus sp.

Wikipedia (2008) says...

"Amorphophallus (from Ancient Greek amorphos, "without form, misshapen" + phallos, "penis", referring to the shape of the prominent spadix) is a large genus of some 170 tropical and subtropical tuberous herbaceous plants from the Arum family (Araceae). A few species are edible as "famine foods" after careful preparation to remove irritating chemicals."

Proudly plagiarized from Wikipedia.

..in full diagonal view.. with funny, broccoli looking thing visible.
Grrr..
Fear my pincers!
And this thing is actually part of the plant. How adorable!
Familiar? I saw this guy's friend in Niah when I was there last July, exact same flowers. Jin-Jer.

*Back in the Park again*

Dark Cheryl
The photographer took a photograph of a photographer taking a photograph... of another photographer.
Shahril Cheryl and the huger than previous huge fig HUGE fig. Just look at the width of that buttress (Wikipedia buttresses.. "Buttresses are large roots on all sides of a tall or shallowly rooted tree", in case you don't know what a buttress is)! We estimated the base of the tree to cover almost our entire room in the Park.

It's not because I wanna make fun of Cheryl (hahah, yeah right), but she is known as the Ficus (fig) lady in the lab since her Honours project was mainly focused on a few fig species, whose leaves she avidly ground on a daily basis. So, for the visible portion in the picture, that's about 2.5 Cheryls wide. But really, if we were to measure it tip to tip of the buttresses, it'll probably be about 4 Cheryls. ~6.5 m. WHOA. That's about 2 storeys wide.

Whitey bitey.

Funny fruit?

Big

Cheryl, amazed at and immediately taken with the huge, huge fig, refusing to leave its side. Girls and big trees.. Tsk tsk, just like Sher Lynn in Mulu as described by her mates last year, obsessed with hugging them huge hard trees.

Everyone wants to take a picture with the biggie though.

And not all of them are decent pictures. Some people are interested in large trunks, others are interested in other large trunks. Oh well.

Spiky, artificial looking, but real.

TY, as usual, thinks out loud (really loud) about his 'put things in your butt' fantasies as he saw this, claiming he already thought about me the last time he was here and saw these. Oh dear.

Closer to the heart of the Park..

Spidey at work.

Cropped. Do *click* it to watch the lil silver spidey sippin a bug for lunch. Just a teaser for the next Mulu post, all about bugs and creepy-crawlies. Probably the longest picture post of the Mulu series.