Gecko

This is a gecko tha twas inside a port-o-let at World Botanical Garden. look at those cute little feet!

Clock Vine (Thunbergia)

I saw this Thunbergia growing at our condo in Hawaii. I have one already, but it is not like this one. (You can see mine by looking at my entry for 9/12/09. The one I have is Thunbergia grandiflora, and I think the one in this picture is T. erecta. It is a much darker color than mine but the flowers are smaller. I took some cuttings of this one but it did not root. My experience is that Thunbergias root easily, but I think the cutting I took stayed in water too long. The Thunbergias are a varied group belonging to the Acanthaceae. If you google Thunbergia you will get some eye candy. Another name for this group of plants is clock vine, a name supposedly derived from the fact that the vine curves in a clockwise direction as the grows. if anyone has one, I would welcome a start.

Agave attenuata in Hawaii

This plant caught my eye immediately. I saw several blooming in yards. This is Agave attenuata and the flower stalks reach 8-10 feet tall. It has several common names that elude to the curved flower scapes. It certainly looks like an Agave, but unlike most Agaves the leaf tips do not end in a spine. It also has the common name of soft agave. i though there were so stunningly beautiful That i immediately wanted one. Unfortunately they are only hardy to zone 9, and turn to mush at the least bit of frost. these plants are too large and beautiful to trap in a pot, so i will just enjoy them from afar.













Plantlets may form on the flower stalk and
you would think this might produce enough plants to reduce the price in the trade. but you would be wrong. they are rare and very expensive.
They originated in Central Mexico, but even there they are rare.

Tropical Fruits

This is a star fruit on a tree in the World Botanical Garden on Kona.

I met a new fruit in Hawaii- rambutan.The red spiky fruit comes in yellow also but the red ones are the only kind I saw. A sawing motion with a knife pierced the thick skin and I was able to pop the pulp out. It has a large ovoid seed and of course I saved a few to try to germinate. I have not tried them yet and I hope they have not dried out too much. The pulp is firmer than a muscadine, but not quite as sweet or sharp.In fact, although it is pleasant, the taste is fairly bland, at least to me. They are a favorite for home gardens and orchards. On the tree rambutan develops in cluster and they keep better if they are left attached to the cluster, rather than picked off. Rambutan is related to lychee which is sometimes on the fruit bar at Chinese restaurants.
We had an array of tropical fruits . Papaya, of course, is familiar, and is good for digestion. The star fruit is beautiful and somewhat sharp in taste and makes a lovely addition to the plate. Passion fruits are the round yellow ones filled with dark seed. The mucilage surrounding the seed is the edible part, and it also is quite acidic. The southeastern passion fruits as I remember them were quite insipid.

The Mule Pit

 
 

We were riding along looking when Hiram suddenly yelled "Stop" and marched off into the brush.He returned a few minutes later saying ,"This is it!" It was the place he and Hannah had visited 5 years previously while on a geology field trip to Hawaii.The story was told to them that a man was plowing a mule at this spot when the plow turned up a rock that was apparently holding that section of the earth together and the entire area caved in. It was not clear to me what may have caused the cavern to form in the first place, perhaps a gas bubble or some different manifestation of a lava tube. It certainly is a deep hole as you can see from the second photo. The site used to be listed as a stop on the road but all signage had been removed, and no trail out to the place was visible from the road. I suspect the reason the public is not encouraged to visit any more is that the area may be unstable and still vulnerable to cave ins.

Kahaluu Beach Park

This is Kahaluu Beach Park where we went snorkeling. If you click on the picture you can get a close up of the sign which says "Caution Slippery Rocks". They are not kidding. If you are not careful you might kill yourself before you got water up to your ankles. But the snorkeling was wonderful. This was a completely new experience for me and I was a little afraid, but it turned out to be an easy thing to do and a super experience. It was like being in the fish tank at an aquarium. The bright colored fish of all sorts were just the same kinds I have marveled at in aquariums. I do not know the names of most of them, but I did see 2 kinds of angel fish, parrot fish, and those yellow fish that have a snout, as well as quite an array of other kinds. I saw live coral and there was also a small sea turtle. We rented really good snorkeling equipment right at the beach. One man who had bought his equipment somewhere else was not able to use his because water kept running into the face mask. There must be a couple of valves that keep the water out. After Kahaluu Beach we inquired around for another snorkeling area but discovered we had already been to the best place on the island. We did try another place near Captain Cook's monument, but it was much deeper I saw fewer fish there.

Landscaping with Poinsettias

This is a picture of a house and the front yard of a house I saw in Kona on Hawaii. It was December, But I was completely stunned by this. As specimens of poinsettias, they were ancient and grand. The youngest had trunks as thick as my upper arm. The oldest had trunks as thick as my fat thighs. They seemed to have been maintained by pruning.While this is a unique take on landscaping, not everyone would want lines of Poinsettias in their yard.The younger ones seemed to be at the bottom of the slope and I wondered if the landscaping represented years of Christmas Poinsettias that had been planted out.
Poinsettias were growing in many people's yards (although this certainly takes the cake as far as abundance), but they also seemed to have escaped and were growing "wild" in places beside the road. It is easy to see how completely innocuous plants could become a menace in place where there is no frost.