At Botanic Gardens Part 2 of 2 – Nomine Si Nescis, Perit & Cognitia Rerum

It all started with a milestone that our team has completed. Monday morning was declared as a half day holiday that was off the record. Nice! And since I needed to send Cynthia off to work anyway, I have decided to head to the Botanic Gardens (commonly misspelled by many including myself as “Botanical Garden” in Singapore) and read the new book by Paulo Coelho.

So I freed a beetle. It is always refreshing to keep in touch with nature. Back in the good old days when I was still schooling, I often head to the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens (right next to where I studied) before school started and during lunch time – to study and to relax. At times, I visited the habitat of the monkeys and the gorillas and the birds and the plant after school. I sought after the solace nature provides, always.

And on that Monday morning, I took a stroll within the garden and pondered upon many things in life. I passed by the spot whereby across the grassland lay the trees that took 30-80 years to grow and blossom – an activity that involved the production of 20 million fragrant flowers and the plant died after such an enormous effort of flowering and fruiting. The name of the plant is Talipot Palms (Corypha Umbraculifera). When my mother and sister visited me in year 2005, that was the exact time when Talipot Palms blossomed. Today, the plant looks almost dead.

Nomine Si Nescis, Perit & Cognitia Rerum literally means “If you do not know the name of things, the knowledge of them is lost too”. This is inspiring as I seldom put in effort to remember names.

First thing I saw when I got out of the car park was … the building specially made for “Orchid Breeding and Micropropagation”. I have been to the Botanic Gardens numerous times and it was the first time when I witnessed how Orchid was being bred. Did you know how Orchid is being cloned in Singapore? There are altogether four stages that took place in four different rooms: growth media preparation room, transfer room, shaker room, and culture room. What fascinated me the most was the shaker room where tons of plantlets in clear crystal jars are being shaken 24×7 by machines. According to the literature, shaking the tissue in the nutrient solution helps to improve the supply of air and nutrients to the tissue. Since the tissue has no sense of gravity, the planetlets do not differentiate into shoots and roots but rather grow into more tissue. The stronger and bigger plantlets are then planted out at the garden. Quite an eye opener.

As I approached the Visitor’s center, the sound of nature slowly overtaken by the sound of school kids. Botanic Gardens surely is a popular place for kids to spend a morning at. I read my book inside a cafe and all of a sudden, a dog barked. Apparently, the dog was disturbed by the noise generated by the school kids. At that very moment, as I concentrated on the sound of the school kids – without fully understand the language they talked about – it sounded like the chirping of birds. Lots of sound and lack of ability to comprehend what they are trying to say.

Techers fed the kids McDonald’s meal. No wonder there are obese in Singapore.

I walked along one of the lakes and witnessed something shocking. A dead fish floating on the water surface was deemed fit for the rest of the turtles to eat. It was quite a gruesome scene when the body of the fish slowly diminished as time went by starting from its tail up. There was a horde of hungry turtles, for sure. And I had just cooked a live fish yesterday for dinner. I could not stand looking at that fish any more.

Trees in the garden are a big thing. There are different kinds of trees planted within the Botanic Gardens and some are adopted by well known organisations or individuals. Back in the city, trees are just for decoration’s sake. I was in my tie and shirt and I didn’t feel quite belong to this one big happy family at the Botanic Gardens. At the city center later in the afternoon, it was a whole different story. I felt being blended in. How strange. What we wear dictates how we feel and the need to conform dictates what we wear.

Nomine Si Nescis, Perit & Cognitia Rerum and learn the names. Each plant and animal was given a surname and a given name, did you know?