Mount Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia

	"I cannot describe the elated emotions I felt in traversing this mountain side, and gazing on forms of vegetable life the most remarkable of any to be found in the whole world!"
	Frederick Burbidge (1880)

Borneo

Map of Malaysia

I have never found any place I visited boring, but some places are more exciting than others such as a 3-week adventure across the island of Borneo in July 1990. The flora of Borneo contains 10,000 - 15,000 species, more than all of Africa, which is 40 times larger. The rate of species evolution in the rainforest is phenomenal for several species of the same genus often occur together. Large numbers of species occur nowhere else. Forty percent of the world's palm species, 50 percent of the dipterocarp trees, and 20 percent of the snakes are found only in Borneo (Kaufman 2002). I expected that the type of people attracted to such a trip would be interested in biologically diverse rainforests with exotic plants, wildlife, and traditional cultures and those seeking adventure from climbing the highest mountain in South East Asia to visiting the world's largest cavern. My traveling companions, mainly from the Melbourne, Australia area, were eight women and one other man, who was married to one of the women. Their ages ranged from 30- to 70-something. I soon learned that their husbands and boyfriends were couch potatoes, deceased, or taking a more traditional vacation with their mates. These ladies were the strongest, humorous, and most intelligent people that I ever had the pleasure of traveling.

tarsius bancanus, tondirukut or western tarsier

duliticola sp., trilobite beetle, larviform female

ant camponotus schmitzi swimming and diving for mosquito larvae in digestive fluid of nepenthes bicalcarata pitcher

Mount Kinabalu

Map Showing Location of Mt. Kinabalu

The highest peak between the Himalayas and New Guinea is 13,435-foot high Mt. Kinabalu. Park regulations stipulate that all climbers to the summit have a registered guide. It takes 2 days to climb up the steep rugged trail, which has over 10,000 steps and no switchbacks. The great variation in altitude and climatic conditions from tropical rainforests near sea level to freezing alpine conditions; precipitous topography producing geographic and reproductive isolation over short distances; history of tectonic accretion; diverse geology including ultramafic (serpentine) outcrops; climatic oscillations influenced by El Niño; and environmental instability due to landslides, droughts, and floods produces a myriad of natural habitats and biodiversity rivaling the rainforests of the Amazon and New Guinea. Of the 4,690 vascular plant species found on the mountain, 400 are found nowhere else. You walk through five vegetation zones where plant communities, climate, and substrate change: lowland, lower montane, upper montane, subalpine, and alpine. Climate ranges from tropical below 1200 m, temperate to 3,610 m, and alpine at the summit. With increasing elevation, the height of the trees gradually decrease, the size and shape of the trees change, and the trees become mossier with more epiphytes (orchids, ferns, moss, lichen, and liverworts). In the lowland forest, billowy canopy trees have buttresses and large leaves. But in the upper montane zone, buttresses are usually absent and trees are slender with small leaves and a flattish crown. Although the lowland rainforests have the highest species diversity, vegetation zones at higher elevations have a larger number of endemic species found nowhere else in the world.

Lowland forest reaching 30-50 m high covers about 35% of Kinabalu Park up to to 1,200 m. Dipterocarp-dominated forest covers the lower slopes of the mountain to 900 m and end above 1,000 - 1,200 m. Dipterocarp is a Greek name meaning two-winged fruit. Above 1,200 m, plants of Australian and New Zealand affinity mingle with Sino-Himalayan and Indo-Malaya genera including many endemic species. More light penetration produces denser groundcover and an abundance of epiphytic mosses, ferns, and orchids. Some of the rattans, spiny palm vines, are over 150 ft. in length. In the lowland hill forests is the world's largest orchid, the Tiger Orchid, Grammatophyllum speciosum, an epiphyte up to 15 feet long, weighing as much as 2 tons with yellow or cream colored flowers up to 6 in across. Primates like orangutans and gibbons prefer the lowland habitats. There are many unusual invertebrates in the lowland forests including trilobite and rhinoceros beetles and colorful butterflies and moths. The world's highest ant diversity is in Poring, Kinabalu National Park. The ant Camponotus schmitzi has an unusual symbiotic relationship with the pitcher plant Nepenthes bicalcarata. Pitcher plants grow on poor soils and obtain nutrients through insects that drown and are dissolved in the liquid that collects in a modified leaf, the pitcher. This ant can swim in the digestive fluids that are fatal to other non-aquatic insects including other ant species. The lowland forests also contain one of the world's largest composite flowers, the giant Voodoo Lily, Amorphophallus hewittii, and the world's largest single flower, Rafflesia arnoldii. Composite flowers are made up of thousands of small flowers. The Voodoo Lily grows up to 6 feet tall. The plant has become rare for some local people destroy the plant in the belief that it is a man-eater. The flower of Rafflesia arnoldii grows up to a meter across and weighs up to 10 kg. Over collection of Rafflesia buds for traditional medicine, which is used to help mothers recover after birth, has contributed to its rarity. As the remaining primary rainforest in Borneo is burned, commercially logged, and converted to oil palm plantations, Rafflesia too is expected to vanish.