Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum

ABOUT THE DIGITAL NATURE ARCHIVE OF SINGAPORE

This website is created by the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (RMBR) at the National University of Singapore, to provide a searchable digital database of Singapore’s natural heritage, i.e., its flora, fauna and natural habitats. The initial funding for creating the digital nature archive (DNA) is sponsored by the Care-For-Nature Trust Fund of Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. RMBR maintains and update the database, with supports from the National Parks Board.

Our objectives:

  • To provide a free online searchable digital database on natural history, for use by students, educators, general public, conservationists and scientists
  • To sort, catalogue and systematically archive the vast treasury of wildlife images, nature places and people from Singapore through
    • slides and print images
    • digital images
    • historical photographs (e.g. from retired university professors, natural historians, experienced photographers, old local books, etc.)
    • video clips and sound clips
  • Provide information on species status, habitats and general biology
  • Permit student to student transfer of knowledge and information through their involvement in collecting more digital images, thereby ensuring the continued building of the database resource.
  • Make Singapore a centre for nature education using IT.

 

Featured Organism

Pterocarpus indicus

Angsana
This is a large tree of up to 40 m tall, with a  rounded crown and drooping branches. The trunk is buttressed and the bark scaly and slightly fissured with age. Leaves are simple pinnate compound, 20-50 cm long, alternately arranged, with 7-9 leaflets ending in a terminal leaflet. Flowers are bisexual, 1.5 cm long, yellow, fragrant and in large axillary bunches. Fruits are flattened pods, 4-5 cm wide, disc-like with a swollen centre and containing one to several seeds. The tree is deciduous and sheds its leaves after a pronounced period of drought. In Singapore, where the season is not pronounced, the tree may not shed all its leaves but does so branch by branch. As the new leaves appear, flowers develop. Thus flowering is not intense unless the drought is pronounced when the entire crown of one or more neighbouring trees are covered in yellow blossoms. Flowers last only a day, to fall and carpet the ground below the next day.  

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Information

Browse complete information about organisms of various kingdoms, as well as people, places and activities.


Media

Browse complete collection of media files contributed by dedicated researchers and naturalists.

Presented by

NUS      RMBR
Sponsored by

Care-for-Nature