Oh, what a beauty!

My beautiful double lotus has not made an appearance for quite a while, that I had forgotten how utterly captivating she can be. I am so happy that she has come for a short stay. With the kind of wind we're getting today, her petals will all probably be blown away by tomorrow. So I'll just treasure these shots I have taken today until she comes back again on another visit!

Linking to:

Fertilizer Friday

Macro Friday

Macro Flowers Saturday

Pink Saturday

The Fruit Of My Passion

This species of passiflora bears green fruit, but I am not sure of the identity of the plant . I have requested my fellow passiflora enthusiasts on  Passiflora-Passion Flowers Online to help me with the identification.

I don't know which I love better, the fruit or the flower! The fruit juice is ever so refreshing and zesty! The flower is ever so exotic and incredibly endearing. That is the allure of the passiflora!

Linking to:

Mosaic Monday

The Sunshine Tree

Erythrina glauca

This beautiful plant has a host of common names like Coral Tree, Swamp Immortelle, Purple Coral Tree, Dadap, Chekring and my favourite, Sunshine Tree.

It is actually quite a small tree, growing up to 8 metres tall. It is popular as a shade tree due to its spreading branches, and its crown begins low on the tree. That makes it suitable to be planted in an average-sized garden. The flowers on the low branches are easily viewed as they are usually at one's eye level

What I like most about this ornamental tropical tree is the colour of the flowers. The flowers are dark crimson, a popular lipstick colour. The shape is also rather unique. The flowers look like claws and they grow in long clusters. 

I've seen these trees planted in the landscaping of sea-side resorts and in parks. The SunshineTrees would certainly add a little resort glamour to your garden! 

These photographs were taken in a park.

Linking to :

Fertilizer Friday

Macro Friday

Macro Flowers Saturday

The Drunken Sailor

I had always known this plant by the common name of Drunken Sailor. I had also often wondered why anyone would refer to this sweet, delicate, most lady-like flower as a drunken sailor. Her perfume is as sweet and heady as her looks. I would think a sailor when drunk would reek of anything but perfume.

It is also known as the Rangoon Creeper. Now this is also unacceptable to me. I get a  picture in my mind of a bar-creeper in Rangoon, also drunk and probably a sailor, being referred to as the Rangoon Creeper. I would expect the Rangoon Creeper to be aka...the axe-murderer. For your information, another name for this creeper happens to be Scarlet Rangoon. Scarlet as in blood red?

Fortunately, there is another common name which I feel suits this gorgeous beauty well. She is also known as the Chinese Honeysuckle. She is truly spectacular, appearing in tri-coloured clusters. Just like the Confederate Rose,the flowers open white, then turn pink and finally transform into scarlet beauties before they wither. This colour change happens over a two to three day period. However, on any one vine, we get to enjoy all three colours as the flowers bloom profusely and constantly throughout the summer season, which means, in the tropics they sport showy vines throughout the year!

Here we have it...the fabulous Quisqualis indica. Interestingly, Quisqualis is Latin for What is that? Apparently, there was some confusion as to whether the plant was a bush or a creeper, so a taxonomist must have named it Quisqualis out of exasperation.

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Linking to :

Garden Blogger's Bloom Day

Fertilizer Friday

Macro Friday

Macro Flowers Saturday

On the Cover of Passiflora Online Journal

I am super excited to announce that the first issue of Passiflora Online Journal is out today, and can be viewed on the website Passiflora Online. I was alerted by Myles Irvine, the webmaster for Passiflora Online by email this morning that the issue was out. When I clicked on the link, to my greatest surprise, I saw that my photograph was on the cover page!

Look, that's me!!! No, not the lizard, I mean that's a photograph I had taken of my passion flower! Well, what is more exciting is that my article on this flower can be found on pages 12 to 15. I had submitted my article to Myles who is the editor and publisher of Passiflora Online Journal (POJ) at the end of last year and we decided that a collaboration would make the article a comprehensive one. He  provides the history, the discovery and the mystery of this fabulous hybrid, while I provide the romance and the up close and personal profile of my Passiflora Soi Fah.





The team who worked on this first issue did such a wonderful job. The journal would appeal to any flower-lover, gardener, hybridizer, as well as people who love passion-fruit as there are articles about the benefits of passion fruit and even how to make a passion fruit drink!

  

Click on this to view the whole journal.