Thursday, May 6, 2010

An Unidentified Plant

This is one plant which has not been identified to date. I did asked in a Plant ID Forum at Green Culture Singapore but no luck there!

The original plant was a bush that hung over into the garden of TK's 3rd brother,Hoo, in Miri, Sarawak. The cuttings were taken to the PJ garden many years ago and they did very well inside a 12"/25cm pot.

Planted in a pot, the plant managed to get to about 6'/180cm tall The flowers (picture taken in PJ) were a continuing source of wonderment to the neighbours and passerbys.

When moving from PJ to Kuching, cuttings were taken and taken back to Kuching. Only a couple of survive. One was planted in the front garden to the left of the driveway and it is now about 14 feet tall!

A bit more information on this plant. Right now it is about 14 feet tall - a single branch was forced to be vertical and supported by a tall wooden stake. Otherwise, it is like a creeper/bush with sharp thorns and, according to TK, covers one side of the wall at his brother's house in Miri.


The flower in the picture is about 12 inches and will keep growing till up about 2-3 feet and last for months. Seems to bloom year round and there are a profusion of flowers hanging pendulously from branches of the plant. When the flowers do set, they produce yellow berries, each the size of a small cherry.

Right now, I have no information at all as to the identity of the plant or where it originated from. If anyone of you knows about this plant, please let me know!

A friend, Nik, e-mailed me and told me that it looks like the Dragon's Tongue (Phyllodium longpipes or Desmodium longipes) that can be seen in the Singapore Botanical Garden.

I checked that out at The Plant Observatory. The Phyllodium longpipes have whitish-looking flowers that set into legumes, unlike this plant that have bright yellow flowers, each of which produce a single berry. The leaves also are different.

So we are no closer to identifying this plant. If anyone of you out that can identify this plant, do tell!!

1 comment:

  1. Check your email. I found the name, one common name is hedgehog.

    Sui Tin

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