Weird flowers & fruits in Sabah Agriculture Park

Sabah Agriculture Park (Taman Pertanian Sabah), which is located 15 Kilometers away from Tenom town, is one of the best agriculture parks in Asia. The park has about 20 gardens with different themes, the area is so big that you need to spend a few days to see everything. I had a day trip there last week and I find the following exotic plants are interesting:

Above: “Mickey Mouse” Flower. Do you see the eyes and ears?

Above: heart shape flower. Valentine’s Day is around the corner.

Above: Circular floating leaves of the giant Amazonian water lily (Victoria amazonica). It can grow more than 1 Meter in diameter and no problem having a 30-40 Kg child sit on it. Some visitors throw coin on these big leaves. Please don’t do it, coz it will cause “sunburn” to the leaf when the metal coin turns hot by sunlight.

Above: Dutchman’s Pipe from South America

Above: Dutchman’s Pipe stinks so bad when it fully grows and flies love it.

Pucuk Manis (species name: Sauropus androgynus) is a very famous vegetable of Sabah. Local Chinese calls it “树仔菜” (means tree vegetables literally). We always recommend tourists to try it.

Above: this flower looks like shrimp’s mouth.

Above: Mahkota Dewa from Indonesia, a magical fruit that can cure cancer of early stage.

Above: “cotton tree”?

Above: the seed with “cotton” inside.

You should hire a guide with you if you want to sample fruits in the park. Not everything is edible. Like the fruit tree above. This tree is used for decoration and the fruits are not edible, and it’s quite a pain to clean the dropping fruits.

Burahol / kepel fruit. Eat it and your urine will smell good.

The fruit of burahol / kepel needs to be cooked to yellow color before consumption.

Above: beautiful Hoya flower

We sample some ripen fruits. I can’t recall their names. They all taste sweet with a bit of sour.

Above: “Ah Bill” fruit (that’s how the name sounds like)? The meat is sweet and taste like pudding, nice!

To make the tour more enjoyable and informative, it is highly recommended that you hire a park guide to show you around. You may go in group and pay for the guide service. Even though I think Sabah Agriculture Park is one of the “must-visit” parks in Sabah, it is not a popular tourism attraction. One of the reasons is that this park is over 100 Kilometers from Kota Kinabalu city and travel agents are lack of interest to promote it.

Photos taken in Tenom, Sabah, Malaysia Borneo