Addendum to: Monsoon Days in Dinagat Island

This is an addendum to my previous post, Monsoon Days in Dinagat Island.

Last month I published an essay about my recent trip to Dinagat. My writing, I’m relieved to say, was received well, at least based off the comments on Facebook and other messages sent to me over social media.

Unfortunately, I also made a factual error in my essay, which I want to correct. I said that Crateromys australis, the Dinagat cloud rat, was recently observed from a mountain resort in the municipality of Tubajon. That’s wrong. The cloud rat was actually observed near Madiza Resort, a mountain resort in the municipality of Basilisa. My boss pointed this out to me in the lab (my bad Sir Aloy).

That said, I also want to take this chance to share a few interesting photos of plants and rocks I took in Dinagat, but was unable to share in my essay. For plants my main resources include the book Ultramafic Flora of the Philippines by Dr. Edwino S. Fernando and Dr. Marilyn O. Quimado, along with photographs from Co’s Digital Flora of the Philippines. I’ve added links to these latter two resources in case anyone wants to check them out, which I encourage you to do. Please note that I’m not actually a botanist, so take my plant identifications with a grain of salt.

My main resource for rocks was my geologist friend Jakob. Thank you Jakob.

In any case, the photos:

The plant is Melastoma malabathricum. I’m not sure what the ant is yet. © Rio Constantino

Ate Abi from the lab thinks this might be Dracaena sp. © Rio Constantino.

“Some peridotite with a cool cross section of serpentine. The green is probably olivine turned serpentine.” (Jakob, 2025). © Rio Constantino

“What the f***? I see foliation, looks like chlorite schist with some weathering. But this is with like 40% confidence.” (Jakob, 2025). © Rio Constantino

As always, thanks for reading!