29. The Director continued collection of marine algae around Raffles 
Light and extended collections to islands lying off Malacca and at Kuantan. 
His collections of October at Fraser’s Hill and Cameron Highlands were 
made while on convalescent medical leave. The Cameron Highlands vegeta- 
tion is but poorly known and the aspect of the area is changing so rapidly 
that colonies of potentially valuable, rare and scientifically interesting plants 
may well be snuffed out under the steam roller of ‘development’ before they 
have been discovered, let alone studied. Even the Director’s small collection 
of 62 numbers contained new Malayan records and others of plants repre- 
sented by only one or two sheets in the Singapore herbarium : for example, 
an Osbeckia sp. unmatched in the Singapore herbarium and in the Malaysian 
collections at Leiden possibly a new species or perhaps an Indian species 
representing an outflier from the Himalayan flora; Medinilla penduliflora, 
very decorative and collected only twice before; Lasianthus salicifolius known 
from only one previous collection made by Ridley in 1908 on the Telom 
ridge : Clidemia hirta, a South American immigrant spreading over both 
lowlands and hill stations in Malaya, now collected for the first time at 
Cameron Highlands; Pycnostachys stuhlmannii, an East African plant now 
running wild. The Director also collected a number of water samples con- 
taining phytoplankton for the Director, Fish Culture Research Institute, 
Malacca. 
30. In the single day trips, most attention was paid to the fresh water 
swamp forest around Mawai, the Gunong Panti and Gunong Puiai Forest 
Reserves. These areas, each some 40 miles distant from Singapore, are the 
nearest considerable blocks of forest remaining. Gardens staff took visiting 
botanists passing through Singapore there and to the Singapore Nature Re- 
serves. Among the noteworthy plants obtained from Johore during these 
trips, the following may be mentioned : Crataeva religiosa, a pretty flowering 
shrub sometimes seen in cultivation; Stemonurus malaccensis; Dipteris 
lobbiana, a rare fern from the Kota Tinggi area, now in great danger of 
extinction by depredations of picnickers; Schoutenia accescens, a tree from 
Gunong Puiai certainly worth cultivating for its beautiful papery yellow 
flowers; Poikilospermum scortechinii, a rare climber with white flowers; 
Phalaenopsis fuscata, an orchid not seen everyday; Aquilaria beccariana, a 
Bornean element in the drier parts of the swamp forest; Phaeomaria venusta , 
a member of the ginger family with rose-like flowers; Lepisorus longifolius, 
a fern; Smilax sinclairii, a common but overlooked plant named after the 
Keeper of the Singapore herbarium; V actinium leptanthum and Maesa 
macrothyrsa, the latter relatively rare. 
31. Accorded by the Keeper the best find of the year however was 
a totally different plant. None of those listed above is really new to Malaya 
nor even to the State of Johore itself. One would scarcely imagine that even 
now in Singapore, after 140 years of botanical exploration, novelties apart 
from introduced plants would turn up. This nevertheless is the case for the 
Director, seeking marine algae in the mangrove mud, and brackish waters 
of the Sg. Kranji, discovered half buried in the mud the first record for the 
Malay Peninsula of the semi-marine Halophila beccarii. It was there in con- 
siderable quantity, but on account of its cryptic habit in a dirty habitat 
which has little attraction for collectors after less lowly plants, it had cer- 
tainly escaped notice of all. Also on Singapore Island the presence in fair 
abundance of Rhizophora stylosa, a mangrove tree and certainly not one 
of microscopic dimensions, was discovered. Ridley recorded it in his Flora 
as probably occurring at Malacca but the Singapore herbarium has no speci- 
men in substantiation and only two collections of a later date from the 
Langkawi Islands. It was found at Tanjong Gul, Tanjong Teritep, and on 
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