43 ° 
_ These trees are grown from seed and are of rather slow growth. 
They prefer good low lying but not too damp soil, stiff clay does 
not suit them at all. 
Olacine^. 
The orange drupe ot the Bidara Laut, Ximenia Americana , a sea 
shore shrub is eaten by natives, but is poor. 1 
CELASTRiNE/E. 
Salacia grandijiora, Kurz, “Nasi Sejuk” is a half scandent 
shrub with dark green leaves and small pearly flowers, the fruit is 
about 2 inches through with a rather thick orange coloured rind 
and a number of seeds enclosed in a sweet pulp after the manner 
of a Mangosteen. It is widely scattered over the Peninsula, but 
apparently does not fruit much. Plants which have been a good 
number of years in the Botanic Gardens have only lately flowered 
and fruited. 
RHAMNE/E. 
Zizyphus Jujuba. i he Jujube is cultivated here and there in 
the Peninsula. It is a thorny shrub or small tree with small ovate 
leaves yellowish beneath, little green flowers and globose or ovoid 
orange yellow fruits. It seems to prefer hot and dry sandy spots. 
It fruits well in Malacca, but a tree for many years in the Singa- 
pore Botanic Gardens has never yet produced fruits. 
Z. calophylla. Wall. Akar Oawai-davvai, a common thorny 
climber, in the edges of forests, produces often an abundance of 
small drupes, orange coloured with a small stone covered with a 
sweet pleasant pulp. It is cjuite worth eating, though too stragg- 
ling and irregular a plant to be worlh cultivating. There is also 
but little pulp on the seeds, and the Malays say the proper way to 
eat it is to swallow seed and all. 
AMPELIDEj/E 
The Grape vine, Vitis vinifera , has been successfully cultivated 
in Singapore, and produced fruit, but the climate of the Straits does 
not appear to suit it really well. In fact it may be said to be des- 
tinctly not a plant for the tropics. The grapes which I have eaten 
in the tropics (Brazil) were small and green of the kind commonly 
known as sweet water grapes and rather poor and acid. The plant 
does not seem to like our heavy rains and thrives best in dry 
weather. 
Vitis Marteni, l he Saigon vine has long been cultivated at the 
Botanic Gardens where it fruits heavily every year. The bunches 
of grapes are very dense so that the little black grapes are not 
much longer than a large sized black currant. Probably if thinned 
out with a pair of grape scissors as is usual with grapes cultivated 
in Europe they might attain a larger size. They are sweet and 
juicy, but leave a slight trace of the irritation on the tongue after 
eating which is so characteristic of our wild grapes. It is probably 
due to the presence of raphides or minute spicules of silica. 
It is readily grown from seed or cuttings. The plant though 
