On February 20, 2012, I joined my friend Hans Breuer (and some tourists he was guiding) for an excursion through the coastal forest behind the Permai Rainforest Resort.
The forest sits on a rocky hillside rich in mosses and ferns...
..forcing many of the trees to straddle their roots over blocks of stone to reach the soil below.
This is a mixed lowland dipterocarp forest. The resort website lists thirty species of forest trees, including five dipterocarps.
Many support woody vines snaking their way ion the canopy.
The stouter vines can seem like woody pythons encircling their hosts.
There are real pythons here too; in October 2011 Hans found a five-metre-long Reticulated Python (Python reticulatus) here, relaxing in a forest stream.
He has written a highly entertaining account of the event, with pictures (and expressions of frustrated jealousy from fellow snake enthusiasts).
These are the pitchers of, I believe, Nepenthes gracilis, a common lowland pitcher plant in Borneo. [NB: more likely to be Nepenthes mirabilis, also a common species].
The forest floor seem particularly rich in fungi (at least, I assume that the peculiar whitish mass in this photo is a fungus - I can't imagine what else it could be).
Continue reading (Incl. Pics) at: Sarawak: The Forest at Permai
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