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OKAY. TODAY'S TRIP.
Today, Melissa, Gene and Natalie went for the Evolution Garden tour training at 9am at Botanical Gardens :DD
Psst. Melissa took the pictures. (She's also speaking xD- Nat)

There were about 3 different group tours, and this was the group we followed. Which consisted of only, uh, four people.

This is apparently an ammonite, it's a type of ancient mollusk. It went extinct about 65 million years ago >_> This is a real fossil!

Here's the entrance to the EVOLUTION GARDEN! The garden is 1.3ha and it was built over a period of 1 year at a cost of $2.8million.

The time the earth was formed and there were no living things.

When plants first appeared, which were the algae and liverworts. Algae has fronds that are kind of springy and liverworts are flat and circular. :)
[Top left: Mel's shoe, bottom left: Nat's shoe, right: Gene's shoe x)]

Period of the Great Coal Swamps. There were more plants and they were growing higher.

These are Lepidodendrons. They're extinct, so these are fake. They seem scaly but the scales are really the leaves.

This is our guide, Shulee(spelling?) and she's still in secondary school. But she knows her plants very well. She's also a tour guide at Sungei Buloh. >_> She's gesturing at the Chicken Tail Fern.(I think) Because the brown thing inside looks like a chicken tail. The Chinese eat it as a delicacy. But it's hard to get in it without any hand protection cause the branches are covered with black thorns.


The tour continued, the trees and plants were getting more diverse and taller. We walked to the small section of Rainforest where there was a banana plant. Apparently, banana fruits don't grow downwards, they grow upwards. Shulee plucked a unripe banana and it was very sticky .o_o

Mel didn't take alot of pictures so other bits of the tour will be put in after every tour session. :)

And here is a group photo where Mel looks utterly unphotogenic :c

Evolution tour group peoples will update again on the last Saturday for this month, till then JIAYOU for the Rainforest group peoples, Trisha and Grace on 11/7/07 :DDDD