This week’s Sunday Stills color challenge theme is ‘Apricot.’ See more responses here. I thought I’d go with some florals for this one.
The top photo is a powderpuff flower, and below that, a beehive ginger. At the bottom we have two views, close and closer, of a milo flower.
Despite being brightly colored, Gold Dust Day Geckos can blend in when they’re on the right plants. I only noticed this one on a palm tree trunk because it was moving. I never tire of the look geckos give me when they realize they’ve been spotted.
Tree Heliotropes are blooming along the coast. They’re not showy flowers but there are lots of them and the bees are all over them.
In a follow up to yesterday’s post, a few close up photos of the flowers, which were very popular with the bees.
The last time I visited Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, the Cannonball Trees (Couroupita guianensis) were flowering more abundantly than I’d ever seen them before. The flowers appear on the tree trunk, but these went all the way to the top and seemed to be blooming on some of the high branches. It was an impressive sight, especially in one instance where a heavily blooming tree was backed by a second tree loaded with cannonball fruits.
After the bloom is over, the petals litter the ground, a final splash of color in the dappled light.
For more information about Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, go to htbg.com.
Not sure what kind of bromeliad this is. I had it labeled as a Dwarf Pineapple, but the more I looked at it, the less that seemed right. Not that it matters since it’s the colors and shapes that I was looking at.
I just liked the way the light illuminated this red ginger in the tangle of tropical foliage.
I spotted these two lady beetles on the underside of a passion vine leaf. The top one is a Seven-spotted Lady Beetle, the other a Variable Lady Beetle. But what got my attention was the fact that they appeared to be interested in the yellow spots on the leaf, as were several ants.
I knew that some passion vines produce these colored bumps to make it look like butterfly eggs are already there. Butterflies don’t like to lay eggs where another butterfly has already done so, though the leaf bumps aren’t foolproof in this regard (see here).
What I didn’t know was that the bumps produce nectar, which attracts ants, as was the case here. And the ants will defend this food source against caterpillars munching on the leaves. Isn’t nature fascinating!
Graham's Island 