I was successful enough to grow this vanilla plant and made it flower hoping I will get the vanilla beans that comes after flowering. But unfortunately, no matter how I tried to pollinate the flowers, no luck with the beans. I guess, I have to look for the bee that does the job properly.
Orchids have been amusing us with their unsurpassed beauty and assortment of colors depending on their variety and even today, I always get amazed by their tenacity to be the focus of attention of so many flower enthusiast and gardeners like me. I am not a collector but I admire their beauty so once in…
I did not know anything about puakenikeni flowers until my daughter requested a lei made of this fragrant flowers to send to her on her birthday. She was working in Las Vegas at the time. So I went looking in every florist shops but nobody seemed to have it. Her birthday month is January and…
This is a picture of the lavender field in Maui I took sometime ago when I attended the wedding of my nephew in Lahaina. It was the perfect opportunity for me to be close to my favorite herb of all, the lavender. Lavender is the most popular herb I know. Not only the flowers smell…
Ilang-Ilang is probably the most fragrant flower on earth. It’s the secret ingredient in most signature perfumes especially Chanel, I learned. Ilang-Ilang or Cananga odorata is a tropical tree indigenous to the Philippines. It grows tall to about 40 ft. in height. In the forests where they grow well is acidic in nature so they…
I call this plant butterfly bush because butterflies lay eggs on the leaves. The caterpillars eat the leaves until the whole plant is stripped. When the caterpillars developed into beautiful butterflies, they suck the nectar from the tiny flowers. The flowers that has been pollinated developed seed pods and I just saw one today that…