Friday, October 07, 2005

Slow Poke

Some fresh, recently fallen Keruing (Dipterocarpus caudatus ssp. penangianus) fruits were seen along Tiup-tiup path - almost two months after the 'end' of the mass fruting season. Well.. the determination of the timing is really quite ambiguous - nobody did actually scan through all twigs to see if there are any 'leftover'.

Anyway, these fruits are in average smaller than most typical fruits, which calyx tubes are about 2~3 cm in diameter.

Check out the seedlings from the earlier batch, already quite tall! (Late fruits are placed beside the seedling in the top-left and bottom photo for comparison)


So, what actually happened to these late fruits? Why did they fall late? Why are they smaller? Are they as viable as the earlier batch?

Can being late an effective strategy to increase survivability? Perhaps.. Or may be they are just abnormal