A dramatic sign at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 160. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.
Also, seven photos posted for Becky’s Squares: Seven. See more responses here.
A Giant African Land Snail.A Metallic Skink.A Cattle Egret scoots in front of a lawn mower.Amaumau Ferns.A Bird of Paradise flower.A mossy section of the Halemaumau Trail in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Leaves, Autumn or Spring.’ See more responses here. Here are some leaves from Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden with captions on the photos.
Anthurium leaves seen from both sides.If you have ferns, you’ve always got fronds!A palm frond.Queen Anthurium leavesRed Ti leavesLooking up into the canopy.
A small Gold Dust Day Gecko climbs over a Wax Ginger. The small yellow parts are the flowers and the red mass is bracts.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Plant Life.’ See more responses here.
Here are a few plants seen on my last visit to Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden. For more information about Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, go to htbg.com.
Big leaves on Heliconia Longissima Red WingsTowering trees reach for the sky.The giant leaves and long spadex of an Anthurium Cupulispathum.A mass of Selaginella Umbrosa ferns.A Powderpuff flower growing from a mossy trunk.The syrupy look of a red ginger.A variety of tropical foliage borders a staircase at the garden.There are plants on land and reflected in the water.
I noticed that in the front border of the house, the ferns and Mother-in-Law’s Tongue or Snake Plant (Sansevieria Trifasciata) needed weeding and cutting back as there was foliage up against the house, a handy highway for ants and centipedes and who knows what else. The only problem is that, at this time of year, this little garden is guarded by a wall of spiders.
These three Hawaiian Garden Spiders are just a few of that kind there, and they’re accompanied by the usual mass of crab spiders and one or two others I’m not familiar with. I wouldn’t mind moving the crab spiders, whose main activity seems to be to build webs in places that mean they’ll end up wrapped around my head. But the garden spiders, I have a soft spot for. The females are quite beautiful and the males, while drab and tiny, are very watchable as they try to mate with the mighty females.
I guess the weeds can wait for another week or two.
This week’s Sunday Stills Monthly Color Challenge is ‘Green.’ See more responses here. One of my favorite spots on the island is Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden and I stopped by there again just last week. As luck would have it, I took a few photos – OK, more than 200; I can’t help it. Many of them – OK, all of them – featured some shade of green. It is a tropical garden after all. Here’s a selection.
All sorts of greens, all sorts of patterns!
Going green. That’s what fronds are for!
Why the long faces? things are looking up.
There’s a gecko in two of these photos. There’s probably geckos in all three, but two are visible.
For more information about Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, go to htbg.com.
The current Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Shapes.’ See more responses here. Since I just paid another visit to Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, I thought some flower and foliage shapes would be appropriate. In the top photo, round lily pads float in the garden’s pond.
The squares show the coils within coils of a Hapu’u fern, a distinctly-shaped anthurium, the familiar curves of an orchid against a large, angular leaf, and the geometric precision of a Guzmania ‘Limones’ bromeliad.
The rectangles start with the distinctive shape of beehive gingers, then large, tropical, heart-shaped leaves, and the sinuous shape of a colorful heliconia.
The bottom photo shows feather-shaped leaves that even look like feathers!
For more information about Hawai’i Tropical Bioreserve & Garden, go to htbg.com.