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NOTES AND QUERIES
Among the plant eating insects in grass-land the most obvious, often the largest insects, are grasshoppers: Patanga sp.—a large brown grasshopper (ca 5 cm or more long), and the smaller short-horned Acrida sp.—are both common in this area. On the plants themselves live leaf-hoppers, spittle bugs, scale insects, the caterpillar larvae of many grass moths and butterflies. The butterfly groups, including "Skippers" and "Small Browns" are particularly common. In summer cicadas are obvious, but not before May. Debris eaters include many ground-inhabiting insects which are not seen unless searched for. Cockroaches, ants, millipedes, and many beetles fall into this category. The predators that live on insects include the numerous spiders, both hunting and web building, and other families such as mantids (M).
e) Also beside the car park are some big granite rocks with crustose lichens on their surface. Look for:
Caloplaca sp. -- bright orange color.
Aspicilia sp. -- pale grey with black spots; probably the most abundant species.
Buellia sp. -- dark grey
and the small foliose lichen:
Xanthoparmelia congensis -- yellowish green, somewhat "leafy" and less part of the rock than the other species
f) Across Tai Mo Shan Road the hillside has been planted with Acacia confusa (a leguminous plant, therefore able to "fix" atmospheric nitrogen). The grey patches on the stems of the acacias are the lichen Lecanora varia. Among the grass in this area is the primitive fern Lycopodium cernuum which is used for making floral decorations, fa pai (RM).
g) If you climb to the top of the first ridge of the site at (f), you can look down onto grassland that was burnt in 1976. This is shown as Plate 1 of the Symposium report (Thrower, 1975); at a guess the fire has "put back" the process of succession by about 10 years. Notice the small