This anthurium positively glowed in a little patch of sunlight.
Red anthurium
Category Archives: Plants
Rosy-faced Lovebirds
This week’s Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge is ‘White and Pastels.’ See more responses here.
Rosy-faced Lovebirds are also known as Peach-faced Lovebirds and they have a lot of color variations. I have yet to see a rosy face in Hawaii outside of tourists who’ve seen too much sun. Instead, the local birds tend towards pastel shades whether they’re dining or simply hanging out.
Kamani tree
Kamani is a canoe plant, brought to Hawaii by early Polynesian settlers, though it grows naturally across most of the Pacific islands. Its common name is Alexandrian Laurel (Calophyllum inophyllum).
The wood of the tree was used for canoe building, homes, containers, and food bowls, and the fragrant flowers are popular with bees.
Fiery Skipper butterfly on Madagascar Ragwort
A Fiery Skipper butterfly feeds on a Madagascar Ragwort flower. Both are introduced species and the flower is something of an invasive weed.
Rattlesnake plant
Rattlesnake plant (Calathea Crotalifera) is native to Central and South America. This one was at Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, but it also grows in the wild in some places here.
For more information about Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, go to htbg.com.
Better Days: Shade tree and bench
The high winds of a few weeks ago caused a fair amount of damage around the island. At Lapakahi State Historical Park, this tree was toppled and took out a bench that had been set up in its shade. The bench will have to be fixed and set up somewhere else because that shade isn’t coming back anytime soon.
A blushing bromeliad
Neoregelia carolinae is known as the blushing bromeliad because, when it’s going to flower, the center turns red, as this one has done.
To the winner goes the spoils
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Peek.’ See more responses here.
I had a couple of photos lined up for this, but a few days ago I was outside cleaning windows. (I do it annually, whether they need it or not!) I got distracted by a kerfuffle in the cane grass behind me. I thought I saw an anole, so dashed inside and got my camera. When I got back and peeked into the tangle mass of cane grass, I could see two anoles locked in mortal combat.
I was pretty sure this was two males fighting. Usually, when there’s a territorial dispute there’s a lot of puffing and posturing that resolves the issue. This time, the two anoles were similar sized and the challenge was on.
It was hard to get a clear view, but each anole had a grip on the other’s head. Both sported dark bruising from the encounter. They wrestled to gain the upper hand, jerking up and down the cane grass as they did so.
Eventually, they fell apart. It was hard to tell who was the winner, but since one of them left the scene, I figured the other had won or defended his territory. However, since he was staggering around like he’d just gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson, the other one might want to regroup and see about coming out for round 2!
