An Ashy Grey Lady Beetle climbs the buds of a Plumeria tree.
Ashy Grey Lady Beetle on Plumeria
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Category Archives: Flowers
Plumeria and Bougainvillea
I saw this colorful tableau at the entrance to Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau National Historical Park. Purple Bougainvillea, white and yellow Plumeria, green leaves, and blue sky. What’s not to like?
Ti flowers
Ti plants (Cordyline fruticosa) are known for their leaves, which sprout profusely and die off from the bottom as the plant grows. But the plant also has lovely flowers, which appear on the end of a stalk, as a mass of tiny white or pink blooms.
View of Pu’u Wa’awa’a
A view of Pu’u Wa’awa’a and Hualalai beyond it. This is the time of year when Jacaranda trees are in bloom.
Plumeria blooms emerging
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Emerging.’ See more responses here.
A while ago I posted a photo of Plumeria buds (here). I returned to that tree several times over the next few weeks and took photos of the same cluster of buds and then flowers to see how they developed. Plumerias aren’t one-bloom-and-done trees. Instead, there’s a continual production of buds, which bloom and die.
I like the swirls and colors of the buds and the different stages of the flowers emerging. I’m not the only one. All kinds of insects can be seen on both the buds and the flowers.
Giant Laulau
Giant Laulau (Syzygium megacarpa) is widespread across the Pacific. These red fruits apparently taste similar to apples though I haven’t yet tried one. This one was at Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden.
For more information about Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, go to htbg.com.
Large Orange Sulphur Butterfly
I liked the colors of this Large Orange Sulphur Butterfly feeding on purple bougainvilleas.
My tropical garden
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Fabulous Florals.’ See more responses here. For this, I’m taking a short jaunt off the island to revisit the first tropical garden I planted. That was in Washington State. Now, I’m aware that Washington State isn’t in the tropics, but I like a challenge.
My goal was to create a garden of hardy tropical-looking plants, with colorful flowers and/or big, bountiful foliage. The first summer, I laid the foundations with three Windmill Palms and a wall of bamboo alongside one fence. Colorful canna lillies and big foliage gave an inkling of what was to come.
The second summer was when the garden took off. Ground covers spread. Vines took off. Pots provided focal points.
And of course, there were those fabulous florals.
One corner of the garden featured a Dicksonia Antarctica tree fern, which was soon joined by a Dicentra Scandens-Golden tears vine, Eccremocarpus scaber – Chilean glory vine, and a Clematis Armandii. There’s less than a month between the second and third photos in the gallery below, and the following summer the area was rampant with color and growth.
But it is Washington State and there are winters and in the winter it can snow. The palms and bamboo bent low under the weight of the snow, but they survived. The tiki torch looked distinctly unhappy with the weather, possibly jealous of those lucky plants that were moved indoors for the winter.
Graham's Island 