NEWS OF TODAY - Orchids at Kipandi Park

DAILY EXPRESS

 

Special Reports

Published on: Sunday, January 08, 2012

Orchids at Kipandi Park
By: Anthea Phillipps

DRIVE for less than an hour out of KK, past Donggongon towards Tambunan. The road winds along the hillside, up and down, never far from the river, past kampung houses surrounded with fruit trees and dusty Bougainvillea bushes, through old rubber plantations and forest scrub, until you come to the kampung of Moyog, at the base of the mountainous spine of Sabah, the Crocker Range. Cross the river and you immediately begin to climb.

Another 10 minutes will bring you to the Kipandi Park, on a corner on the right-hand side of the road.
Kipandi was originally started by entomologist Dr. Steven Chew, as a conservation project with the Sabah Wildlife Department, to breed endangered butterflies.

Over the last few years, however, it has become equally well-known for its collections of wild orchids and other plants which thrive under the care of the Plant Gardens Manager, Linus Gokusing.
This too, is the result of a valuable conservation project with the Sabah Wildlife Department, which rescues plants from areas that have been logged or are being cleared for oil-palm.
Kipandi's plants come from all over Sabah.

Lowland species grow easily at Kipandi, for it is only 700m above sea-level, but that is enough to bring it above the worst of the muggy heat of the lowlands and the cooler night temperatures also allow many mountain species that would die in the coastal plains, to thrive, so it is the perfect place to grow plants, and beyond the butterfly enclosure are the plant houses, crammed with greenery.
Here, narrow paths lead past tree-fern stumps overgrown with orchids.

The ground beneath is covered in other plants, while mosses and ferns creep over the edges of the paths, and tall ground orchids bloom in hidden corners.

There are at least 500 different species of orchids here, and more keep turning up, for many of the plants are from areas where there has been virtually no plant collecting in the past.
Twenty-six new orchid species have been described from the Kipandi collections since the project started in 2006!

Along the main paths at Kipandi and around the outside of the plant-houses, Bamboo orchids (Arundina graminifolia) have been planted, while inside the plant houses, there is a whole host of other treasures.
Every time you visit, something different will be flowering.

Kipandi has many other plants, including pitcher-plants, wild begonias and Hoyas but the gardens here are not just another tourist attraction.

Kipandi is now recognised as one of Sabah's most important germplasm collections and it and other plant centres like it are the last chance for many species that may already be extinct in wild.
Now is the time to start propagating these rare species so that eventually they can be replanted in their natural habitats.