Zinnias (in the Caribbean)
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Daily Botanical
Botanical and garden photography by Gayla Trail.
Kohleria ‘Brazil Gem’
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Fresh Coffee Bean
On our last day of the trip, our friend David in St. Lucia picked some red, ripe coffee beans (aka cherries) off of the Arabica bush, one for each of us, and instructed us to bite through the thick skin with our teeth. Next, he said, remove the beans and put them in your mouth, …
Cosmos Sulphureus at Scotts Head
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Torch Ginger Flower
I’ve seen torch ginger (Etlingera elatior) flowers in floral shops and thought they were interesting, but it’s quite another thing to see the waxy flowers in amongst the massive leaves and stalks of a 20 foot plant. As our friend David pointed out, It’s amazing how much plant it takes to support the flowers.
This is How Bananas and Plantains Grow
At one time just about everyone in Dominica grew bananas. Stabilized market prices made it possible for farmers to etch out a humble prosperity growing and selling bananas for export to the UK. But Dominica’s small-scale banana farmers can no longer compete with the massive plantation output of Latin America’s big banana business. Between that …
Giant Granadilla Flower
One of these days I will sit down and put together a longer post about the giant granadilla (Passiflora quadrangularis), a passionfruit that is as large as a small melon! We were treated to one on our first night in St. Lucia and I have been thinking about it ever since and pondering when i …
David’s Orchid (Spathoglottis plicata)
In August 1979 a massive hurricane hit the small island of Dominica, devastating just about everything in its path including homes, roads, crops, trees, and even leaving mountaintops bare. Amazingly, in the wake of all of that destruction, the hurricane left behind a new plant, Spathoglottis plicata, an Asian ground orchid that can now be …
