Yishun Park is home to a Dipterocarp Arboretum, which is just a fancy name for a botanical collection of rainforest trees belonging to the Dipterocarpaceae family.
Dipterocarp means "two-winged fruit" and this name is derived from the two- to five-winged fruits that this family of trees produces. With a great diversity of leaf forms and some 500 species existing in our region, Dipterocarps (also known as forest giants) are iconic trees that constitute the backbone of Indo-Malayan rainforests and is unique to this region. They can live up to 1,000 years old, grow up to 80metres, and are commonly used for timber. However, many of these forests in the region have diminished over the years.
The Dipterocarp Arboretum showcases more than 800 trees of over 70 species. It is designed to help visitors learn more about the unique features of the Dipterocarps and witness the growth of the young saplings into tall majestic trees over many years. The different groups of Dipterocarps featured here are Dipterocarpus, Shorea, Hopea (these being the 3 main groups), and Anisoptera, Dryobalanops, Neobalanocarpus, Parashorea, Vatica.
But enough about trees. Around the park, you can find 2 types of educational puzzles for children, in which they have to substitute letters into symbols to form sentences. You can find one of each close to the posted coordinates. To get the coordinates of the cache, you will need to find these structures and the letters the symbols represent, convert the letters into numbers using the standard A=1, B=2, C=3, ... , Z=26, then plug them into the equations below:
Use the geochecker to verify your solution. Within the geochecker is a spoiler photo showing where the cache is.
