TECOMA IN THE BOTANIC GARDENS

Tecoma stans is a species of flowering perennial shrub in the trumpet vine family, Bignoniaceae, that is native to the Americas. Common names include yellow trumpetbush,yellow bells, yellow elder, ginger-thomas. Tecoma stans is the official flower of the United States Virgin Islands and the floral emblem of the Bahamas.

Yellow trumpetbush is an attractive plant that is cultivated as an ornamental. It has sharply toothed, lance-shaped green leaves and bears large, showy, bright golden yellow trumpet-shaped flowers. It is drought-tolerant and grows well in warm climates. The flowers attract bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. The plant produces pods containing yellow seeds with papery wings. The plant is desirable fodder when it grows in fields grazed by livestock. Yellow trumpetbush is a ruderal species, readily colonising disturbed, rocky, sandy, and cleared land and occasionally becoming an invasive weed.

This fine specimen is growing in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens, but the species is found in many parts of Melbourne, in parks, gardens, as a street shrub and in yards. Tecoma is also a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 34 km east from Melbourne's central business district. Its local government area is the Shire of Yarra Ranges. At the 2006 Census, Tecoma had a population of 2,189. The suburb is named after the shrub Tecoma that grew in the area when the need was identified for a railway station for the timber mill that occupied the site where Tecoma Primary School now stands.

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme,
and also part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme,
and also part of the Friday Greens meme.