Category Archives: Flowers

Ohia Lehua flower

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Country or State Flower.’ See more offerings here.

The country flower for the USA is the rose and I don’t have photos of those. The state flower for Hawaii is the hibiscus and, while I have lots of those, they’re all of Chinese hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis). The state flower is the native yellow hibiscus (Hibiscus brackenridgei) and I have none of those. The native hibiscus is not often seen in the wild and is currently considered an endangered species, but it is used as an ornamental in domestic gardens.

Having struck out on the two proper responses to this challenge, I’ve chosen to post photos of the official flower of the Big Island, the red ʻōhiʻa lehua (Metrosideros polymorpha). A member of the myrtle family, ʻōhiʻa lehua is endemic to Hawaii. It’s one of the first trees to colonize lava flows. It’s able to survive in such a tough environment because its roots grow down into lava tubes and other voids in the lava and tap into the moisture there.

Recently, ʻōhiʻa trees have been attacked by a fungus which can cause the trees to die within a very short time. This disease, known as Rapid ‘Ohi’a Death, is caused by two new types of Ceratocystis fungus.

Plumeria

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Sweet.’ See more offerings here.

In my part of the Big Island, plumerias are starting to bloom in their curious way where the flowers appear on the tree before the leaves. In warmer parts of the island, plumeria trees are already thick with flowers and leaves. But in all cases, the flowers are redolent with a sweet perfume.

I like this photo because the blooms in this cluster are at different stages, from the tightly-curled buds at bottom right to the fully-open bloom at top left. But my attention was drawn to the flower unfurling in the center, all shadows and light and dappled with raindrops.

Also posted in response to Bushboys Last Photo for January 2020 challenge. See more responses here.

Bees on an agave flower

I’ve posted about agave attenuata before, in January of last year (here). The plants are blooming again and, once again, the bees are all over them. This year I wanted to focus on the bees in flight, just before they settled on the flowers to forage. This resulted in a fair number of bees buzzing around my head, but I worry less about that than I used to. I took a lot of photos, most of which were free of bees, or featured bee blurs.

These were a couple of my favorites, each capturing a bee just before plunging into the bounty within.