The sixth year of this blog starts with a photo I took to isolate a bird of paradise flower against the blue sky. But when I looked at it, my first thought was that it looked like some kind of Soviet emblem from the days of the Cold War, possibly something associated with the space race or armaments.
The only thing that rules that out is that the flower is far too colorful for that kind of thing. Perhaps the version below would be more appropriate. Onward comrades to Year 7.
A week or so ago, I saw a small group of people decorating this dead tree alongside the main highway a couple of miles shy of Hawi. Lavished with tinsel and ornaments, it might be this tree’s last hurrah in the world, but what a way to go!
Golden penda (Xanthostemon chrysanthus) is a member of the myrtle family and native to Queensland, Australia. Though it can grow to 50 feet high, it’s generally kept more compact in domestic gardens, where it’s grown for its showy yellow flowers.
I labeled this hibiscus pink, but when I looked at it again it seemed more purple. Mauve perhaps? Whatever the color it’s a striking flower.
This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Red and Green.’ See more responses here.
Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) have been associated with Christmas for centuries in Mexico and Central America, where the plant hails from. The plant was introduced to the United States in the 1800s, but it wasn’t until the last century that the Christmas link really took off. This was mostly due to savvy marketing tactics by the Ecke family, which had a monopoly on the poinsettia market thanks to their discovery of a secret grafting method which produced a denser plant and wasn’t duplicated until the 1990s.
The red ‘flowers’ are actually bracts, which hold the fairly insignificant flowers. On the Big Island, their brilliant displays are quite common on the west side of the island, where they can be seen as bushes and trees.
Passion vine butterflies lay eggs on passion vine leaves because that’s what the caterpillar is going to eat. Mostly, a butterfly will lay one egg per leaf so some passion vines have developed yellow spots to try and convince butterflies that the leaves are already egg laden. I haven’t seen this strategy working too well.
Once a caterpillar emerges it will begin a life of voraciously eating passion vine leaves. There’s an early video game quality about this as the mouth chomps back and forth across the leaves, cutting one arc after another.
However, despite the presence of caterpillars, butterflies continue to lay eggs on the leaves. So what happens when a caterpillar comes across an egg? It makes no distinction and down goes the egg. So long cousin Billy!
The milo tree (Thespesia populnea) is a canoe plant, brought to Hawaii by the early Polynesians, though it was probably already here before then and so is considered indigenous.
The flowers, which don’t open fully, start out a delicate yellow with red patches at the base, becoming dark pink later. The flowers are followed by green seed capsules which dry to brown.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Auburn.’ See more responses here.
I have to confess that color is not my strong suit, hence some of my clothing choices. So when it came to picking a photo for this theme, I wasn’t sure what color I was looking for. A casual search revealed a lot of different shades loosely covered by that name. In the end, I opted to go with the official RGB color value (165 red, 42 green, 42 blue).
Armed with that information I ditched my original choice of a dirt road, thrilling photo though it is, and opted for this orchid. I’m not sure what kind of orchid it is, but I know for a fact that within those darker areas of the petals are several areas that are officially auburn.
Graham's Island 