Thursday, October 23, 2008

quicko: flora




Guess what?? I have a new favorite flower: the frangipani!

You might know it as the Hawaiian lei flower, but it grows here -- on trees! It comes in white, light pink and light yellow and is absolutely gorgeous and smells beautifully. What more do you want in a flower?

The trees here are magnificent in general -- some tremendously big, some full of hanging vines that are actually supposed to be there, some with unusual bark and some twisty and turny. They're beautiful.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Yep. Totally agree. Gum Trees are cool, Wattles are inspiring (if hay fevery) but you can't go past a good frangipani for how plants are supposed to be. If they grew nice fruit they'd be perfect.

Anonymous said...

I particularly like the wood nymph that comes with this tree. Do you find that in many Australian trees?

Laetitia :-) said...

The ones with the 'hanging vines that are actually supposed to be there' are probably figs. Those hanging vines are actually aerial roots that will become full-on roots then morph into extra 'trunks' when they hit the ground and become established. If you want to keep a fig tree in check so it doesn't take over the world, you have to lop off those babies every so often. However, if you want a beautiful, massive tree that provides a huge area of lovely, welcome shade, then just let nature take its course.