Saluting every life with a flower each day! Flowers are soul of the planet, blooming to play music with silent notes. Smile at them as they are sweet hearted!! Only the photographs taken by me are uplinked. I lean heavily to http://www.flowersofindia for flower identification and descriptions. Looking forward to valuable comments and suggestions.
The Blue morning glory or Japanese Morning glory is an annual or short-lived perennial plant, cultivated for its highly attractive morning blooms. This plant climbs on the support provided and profusely flowers. The beautiful flowers open early in the morning and do not last long, as the sun heats up, it folds down! I have a great admiration to these flowers and love to see them smiling throughout the day, but its a dream. In the current Dussera flower show at Mysore, there were many such plants, maintained very beautifully in pots. This photograph i took in the morning of 5th October, 2011. And today being Dussera, i dedicate this flower to my dearest friend, a symbol of bright heart like this morning glory !
October 5, 2011
Scientific name: Ipomoea cairica
The mile-a-minute vine or Railway creaper is a beautiful evergreen creeper.It creeps over everything and anything around it. The hairless leaves with 5-7 lobes gives a smooth and pleasant look. The plants can be seen almost all along the railway tracts and hence the name! The purple flower studded vine wrapped around the material in which it twines is a wonderful sight. I have an obsession with the creeper as it has followed me where ever i worked. While i was working in Denkanikottai (Tamil Nadu), i used to visit farmers for inspecting their silkworm crops. I used to take a particular route, just to enjoy the beauty of this vine spread over the way side hedges with numerous flowers smiling at me. Even in Mysore, just outside my lab, the old well is fully covered with this vine and i lost the count how many times i have gone and enjoyed the beauty. Further, outside the gate, it has formed a hut like structure, where i leaned in and took this photograph, on 11th September, 2011. I was literally about to fall off the hedge, while doing so ... but it is worth taking the risk to enjoy the beauty.
The beautiful garden common geraniums are indigenous to South Africa and then were a delight to the gardens of European countries. It further spread across the globe with many more hybrids being produced by gardeners with improved floral varieties. The succulent leaves are alternate and palmately lobbed or pinnate. The plants are used for bedding, borders and also maintained in containers. Bears 4 to 5 inch diameter flower clusters with many small florets arranged in a hemi-sphere. The prolific flowers range in colours from white, magenta, orange or even double colours by forming vibrant margins around the petals. While i was working in Bangalore, my friend introduced me to this plant and presented me some cuttings and had three varieties in my garden. Recently on my visit to the Uncle and Aunt in Mysore, i had a happy feeling seeing many garden varieties in their home. I took this photograph in the cloudy evening of 4th September 2011, as light was falling rapidly.
Vine Fuchsia comes from Peru, which grows like a vine and has hanging clusters of long tubular flowers. The flowers are hermaphrodite (have both male and female organs) and are pollinated by insects. Propagation is done through seeds. This photograph was taken from the Botanical Garden of Ooty on 27th April 2011, while I was on a pleasure trip with my family, along with some relatives.
The lesser periwinkle is native to central and southern Europe. The plant is also known as small periwinkle or common periwinckle. It is a trailing perennial ever green herb with creeping stems. The leaves are opposite, 2-4.5 cm long, glossy dark green with a leathery texture and an entire margin. The solitary blue to violet flowers rise from leaf axils, with a five lobbed corolla. The plant is used in the ethano-medicine. It is considered as an astringent, as a remedy for nervous disorders and in healing high blood pressure. The flower has called my attention due to its calm and solitary appearance. I shot this photograph on 30th November 2010 evening in the Sims Park, Coonoor.
This plant is also known as Indian shot and is native to Caribbean and tropical America. This popular ornamental plant grows upto to 1.5 m. The flowers are red, orange, yellow or variegated and easily steals the attention, due to the virbrant colours. The seeds are black, spherical and resembles shotgun pellets and hence the name, Indian shot. The perfectly round hard shells have surprised my daughter, just when i opened the pods. The seeds are used in natural jewelry as beads. The plant is very common in Mysore. I usually see it on my way to my work and also on my walking tracks. This photograph was taken on August 28th, 2011 from a house in front of my Institute.
The bottle brush is a shrub or small tree. It is native to the states of New South Wales and Queensland in Australia. They are a gardeners delight for the floral beauty and used in landscaping. The flower spikes are made up of a number of individual flowers. The pollen of the flower is found on the top of a long stalk, which gives the flower spike its colour and distinctive bottle brush shape. I have observed this plant in many home gardens in Trivandrum, my native place. This photograph i took while on a trip to Coonoor in the evening of 3rd December, 2010.
