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.
Squirrel tail or white shrimp plant is a graceful and elegant plant, native to India. A beautiful unusual shrimp plant, very rare. Very floriferous plant producing in abundance erect white bracts with a green netting pattern. It’s flowers start out white then turn to pink with age, giving a beautiful contrast. A free branching upright shrub, producing a very attractive tropical inflorescence throughout winther-spring of erect heads of 6” white bracts with pink flowers. Noticeable are the conspicuous bracts and the strongly two-lipped corollas. This plant is very common in Mysore and i took this photograph on 5th December, 2011 just outside the institute, where i work now.
Cardinal's Guard is a shrub, growing up to 2 m tall, native to South America. Oppositely arranged leaves are elliptic to inverted-lanceshaped, 10-30 cm long. Stunning red flowers are borne in a dense spike, at the end of the branches, with a green overlapping bract below each flower. Flowers are tubular, curved, strongly 2-lipped, 5-6 cm long, with 2 protruding long stamens. Upper lip is narrow and the lower one is deeply 3-lobed. This plant is propagated by cuttings. I took this snap on 25th December, 2011 at my native place.
An erect, climbing, ascending or prostrate biennial or perennial shrub. Leaflets 12-30 pairs, sessile, opposite, lanceolate, acute, 6-12 mm long, 1.5 mm wide; inflorescence a head, one to three in the axils of leaves, on stalks 1 cm long, hairy, about 12 mm in diameter; corolla united at least at the base (gamopetalous), pale pink; stamens twice as many as the petals; fruit a pod, spiny, three- to four-seeded, borne in clusters, linear, flat, 10-35 mm long, splitting transversely into one-seeded sections which separate at grooves or seams (sutures); seeds flat, ovate, 2 to 2.5 mm long, light brown. I took this photo on 20th December 2011 in my native place.
Balloon Vine is a woody perennial vine distributed almost globally in the tropics. It is a fast growing vine up to 10 feet. Leaves are trifoliate, up to 4 inches long, with highly lobed leaflets. The plant climb with tendrils and needs some form of support. The small white flowers bloom from summer through fall, flowers are not very showy. The fruit is more interesting, from which the plant gets its common name. It is a brown, thin-shelled, inflated angled capsule up to 3 cm across, containing 3 black seeds each, with a white heart-shaped scar. On this valentin's day, it would be appropriate to uplink this flower, wherein the heart (symbol of love) is inscribed into the seeds. I took this photograph on 5th February, 2012, near my lab.
