Seashore Finds

I hope you remember the sunrise shots i showed you last week, from the beach only 3km from our house, yet i have just seen the sunrise for the first time. When the sun was already a bit up there, at 7:00am our time, the heat was already a bit intense driving me to seek refuge from the shadows of some vegetation. There i found a lot of interesting subjects too. Last time i showed the morning moon at the west. Here i will show you some unusual finds as well.

Pulang Bato (Red Rock) at the distance

  

This tree gave a formidable presence being alone at the shoreline giving a bizarre thrunk as shown above. I intensely looked at it thinking it experienced stresses in the past, to have those very unusual convolutions and contours at the base. I suppose it was not the waves that pounded it through time, but perhaps men inflicted harm on it. It was able to heal itself very well despite its difficult past! 

A trunk that experienced decades of unusual circumstance! At this age, we say it is a trunk with character! And it can produce long paragraphs of descriptions or discussions. 

 I looked up and these wonderful flowers amazed me. They are thoroughly inviting with those loud colors.

 There is a lot of inflorescence borne at the stem tips devoid of leaves. And the stems fully exposed to the sun borne the leaves in palmate arrangement.

 Some blackish brown pods bearing black seeds arise on bigger stems. I wonder if birds pollinated them too, as i didn't see any bird that time. If those seeds are fertile, then this tree could probably be brought by the waters here.

I posted this in Facebook asking for identification, which eventually surfaced as Sterculia foetida, or calumpang in the vernacular. Some search in the net showed medicinal values that even can be useful for diabetis.

  Another unusual find i had that morning are these pods, obviously dried fruits of some vines. They are also hanging from the Sterculia foetida tree posted above. However, i don't know the identity of this vine.

A lot of these dried pods are scattered on the trunks, but they are totally wilted that didn't allow me to know how the vegetative plant looks like.

I cannot touch them as they are high up on the tree. But they look hollow which might render them float on the sea after falling on the ground. Those sepals as wings will also allow them to reach distant places, where they can eventually germinate and continue the species.

Nature Notes

Our World Tuesday