Penang Botanical Gardens: Forest trail
A short bus ride out of Penang, where terra-cotta roof tiles continue to fire in perpendicular sun, the Penang Botanical Gardens offer a break from urban noise and heat as they have done for 150 years.
Cut into the island’s hills by a small river, this v-shaped valley was dedicated to plant science by British Victorians in the mid 19th century. Fifty odd years after Joseph Banks fathered exploratory botany, British colonial botanists, inspired by curiosity as well as profit, invested in tropical botanical gardens in the Malay Straights – this is the third after Singapore and Melucca.
This is a Kew hothouse minus the glass… and there are some additions.
Mynah birds flit around, investigating waste bins, cruising cafe terasses and staking out picnics. There seem to be no starlings; this einstein-bright tropical mimic fills the same niche.
In the lofty understory of the surrounding rainforest, bright yellow orioles call. Like the European relative, the Black-naped Oriole sounds like a child experimenting with a christmas whistle. The flutey timbre echos through the tropical canopy…
Butterflies bigger than small birds settle on mosses that grow on the small waterfalls.
A large turtle suns himself on a boulder in the river.
… and at any point in the park visitors may see the long-tailed macaques, large grey and rather elegant monkeys roaming in a family troop.
Long Tailed Macaques at Penang Botanics
We watched them from the shade of an Indian cafe near the park entrance. A mother had her infant pinned to the grass with a black leathery foot. With the baby spreadeagled and with a look of blissful resignation, his mother was riffling slowly backwards through his fur with her right hand as one might thumb the pages of a book, while with the left she was picking out specks and popping them into her mouth. The look of close concentration on her face I have seen on humans as they focus on a computer game or a mobile phone.
Kew with extras.
Asian Food Safari 