Babel School in Taiwan

One of December nature class walks took us to Xianjiyan in Jingmei 景美仙跡岩. It was our second time there. I wrote about our first hike in March 2016 HERE  and HERE . This time we started our walk from the other direction, as the previous entrance to the trail was destroyed by landslide. We had to climb many, many stairs which led us through the old housing neighbourhood. It's hard to believe, but there are still people living in these houses. You can see a few old graves hidden among the bushes. Climbing up we enjoyed the wonderful views of whole Taipei. Despite the weather, which was wet and cloudy, Taipei still looked impressive. On almost all the hills and mountains in Taipei you can find bigger or smaller temples. This one had an impressive library. On the way down we saw a very unique tree - a rock hugging ficus. Other interesting features we found included a face on a rock, carved in a rock character

At last week's nature class, after meeting at the Gongguan MRT Station 公關捷運站 we walked over to the bottom of the so called Toad Mountain 蟾蜍山. If you would like to know where this interesting name came from, please go to my previous post about the Toad Mountain in May 2016. On the way to the foot of the hill we stopped by a tree at the entrance to National Taiwan University. The poor bishop wood's juices are being sucked out by the strangler fig which is growing around it's trunk. In a few years bishop wood is going to ... die. Bishop wood - Bischofia javanica - 茄東苳 Strangler fig - 殺手樹 Corkystem passionflower - Passiflora suberosa - 三角葉西番蓮 Horsetail - Equisetum -木賊 - Skrzyp On the small green square we also came across some interesting insects. Silver-spotted Skipper - Hesperia comma - 弄蝶 - Karłątek klinek This wasp-looking insect is a moth. Wasp moth (clearwing moth) -  Amata hirayamae - 狹翅鹿子蛾 Grasshopper -  Xen