Mosses in Malaysia

Well I sure had a whirl-wind adventure traveling around southeast asia for 2.5 weeks. The itenary was as follows. I flew from New York to Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur to northern Borneo (then back), Kuala Lumpur to Java (then back), I stayed put in Kuala Lumpur for a few days, and then home to Connecticut.

My favorite part of the trip was Northern Borneo. We were in Sabah, Malaysia near the town of Sandakan. We roomed at the Sepilok Jungle Resort, and I thought that it was a nice place to stay despite the poor review it was given in the most recent Lonely Planet Malaysia. We visited the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Center and the Rainforest Discovery Centre, both within walking distance of our lodging. With the rainy season upon us, we didn't get to explore aroung the rainforest nearly as much as I would have liked. Here are some of the mossy photos from the adventures.

All available surfaces were covered in mosses including tree trunks, fallen logs and hanging vines.

 

Here we have some mosses in the Calymperaceae. They are a very common family in the Pacific Tropics. Their identifying feature are the clusters of gemmae at the tips of the leaves.

 Some tiny critters like this ant were hiding among the mossy cover.

A few of the species that I saw had some tiny sporophytes rising above the leafy gametophytes.