EGGPLANT FLOWERS

Many vegetables and fruits have beautiful flowers that many people are not familiar with!

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

LILAC 'SENSATION'

In mid-spring this hybrid lilac Syringa vulgaris 'Sensation', blooms and bears fragrant, single purple blossoms with distinct white margins. It forms a shrub 3 metres high by 2 metres wide. Lilac flowers are beloved for bouquets, and when in bloom, hummingbirds and butterflies are drawn to them. Lilacs are generally a forgiving bunch, tolerant of roadside sites and neglect.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

SNAIL VINE

Vigna caracalla is a leguminous vine from the family Fabaceae, originating in tropical South America and Central America. The species is named "caracalla", from the Latin for "hood or cloak", referring to the hooded shape of the open flowers. Some people suggest that this specific meaning comes from Caracas in Venezuela, but this is probably a misapprehension.

This perennial vine has fragrant flowers reminiscent of hyacinths. The buds, especially have a distinctive curled shape, giving rise to the common names "corkscrew vine", "snail vine", "snail creeper", or "snail bean". This vine is hardy in zones 9 and above, liking full sun and consistently damp soil. It prefers high heat and humidity and can become invasive if these conditions are met. In colder zones, it does well in a pot if it is overwintered inside.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

BUDDLEJA

Buddleja commonly known as the butterfly bush is a genus comprising over 100 species of flowering plants endemic to Asia, Africa, and the Americas, within the Buddlejaceae family. The generic name bestowed by Linnaeus posthumously honoured the Reverend Adam Buddle (1662–1715), a botanist and rector in Essex, England, at the suggestion of Dr. William Houstoun. Houstoun sent the first plants to become known to science as buddleja (B. americana) to England from the Caribbean about 15 years after Buddle's death.

As garden shrubs Buddleja is essentially a 20th-century plant, with the exception of B. globosa which was introduced to Britain from southern Chile in 1774 and disseminated from the nursery of Lee and Kennedy, Hammersmith. Several species are popular garden plants, the species are commonly known as 'butterfly bushes' owing to their attractiveness to butterflies, and have become staples of the modern butterfly garden; they are also attractive to bees and moths. The most popular cultivated species is Buddleja davidii from central China, named for the French Basque missionary and naturalist Père Armand David.

Other common garden species include the aforementioned B. globosa, grown for its strongly honey-scented orange globular inflorescences, and the weeping Buddleja alternifolia. Several interspecific hybrids have been made. Some species commonly escape from the garden. B. davidii in particular is a great coloniser of dry open ground; in urban areas in the United Kingdom, it often self-sows on waste ground or old masonry, where it grows into a dense thicket, and is listed as an invasive species in many areas.

Popular garden cultivars include 'Royal Red' (reddish-purple flowers), 'Black Knight' (very dark purple), 'Sungold' (golden yellow), and 'Pink Delight' (pure pink). In recent years, much breeding work has been undertaken to create small, more compact buddlejas, such as 'Blue Chip' which reach no more than 0.6–0.9 m tall, and which are also seed sterile, an important consideration in the USA where B. davidii and its cultivars are banned from many states owing to their invasiveness.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

MELBOURNE STREET TREES 151 - NATIVE LILAC HIBISCUS

Alyogyne huegelii is a flowering plant found in the Southwest botanical province of Western Australia, extending along its entire coastline. A large flowered shrub, the species favours the sands of coastal shrublands and heath. The large flower, highly variable in colour, is similar to that of Hibiscus. It was previously placed in that genus, and is commonly named "Lilac Hibiscus".

It is widely cultivated as a flowering plant for the garden, but the varieties and cultivars previously published are no longer formally recognised. Alyogyne is a shrub to four metres with many alternate branches, although lower ones may be sparse. Bright green leaves are divided in three to five in outline; margins are irregular, lobate to toothed; pubescent and strongly veined lobes are coarse in shape. The flowerstalk at the leaf axil is long, tilting at the single flower.

The flowers have five luminous petals up to 70 mm long, these are overlapping and have slight ridges. The colour is cream or mauve, or the lilac of the name by which it is traded. The staminal tube structure contains numerous whorled anthers, these are yellow. The five styles of this are fused until the tip, which is composed of swollen and apparently divided stigma. This is supported on a five-lobed calyx, within an arrangement of up to 10 partly fused bracts. As with all the Malvales, the flowers last around a day – becoming deeply coloured and papery when spent. They are numerous in the long flowering period in Australia being between June and January.

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

MELBOURNE STREET TREES 45 - WISTERIA

I am stretching the term "tree" if I consider wisteria, a robust climbing plant, as a tree, but humour me in the name of poetic licence... Nevertheless, wisterias can climb as high as 20 metres above the ground and spread out 10 metres laterally.

Wisteria (also spelled Wistaria or Wysteria) is a genus of flowering plants in the pea family, Fabaceae, that includes ten species of woody climbing bines native to the Eastern United States and to China, Korea, and Japan. Some species are popular ornamental plants, especially in China and Japan. The botanist Thomas Nuttall said he named the genus Wisteria in memory of Dr. Caspar Wistar (1761–1818). Questioned about the spelling later, Nuttall said it was for "euphony", but his biographer speculated that it may have something to do with Nuttall's friend Charles Jones Wister, Sr, of Grumblethorpe, the grandson of the merchant John Wister.

Wisteria sinensis, shown here flowers in the spring (just before or as the leaves open). The flowers of this species are fragrant, and the seeds are produced in pods similar to those of Laburnum, and, like the seeds of that genus, are poisonous. Wisteria is an extremely hardy plant that is considered an invasive species in many parts of the world.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

MELBOURNE STREET TREES 22 - MELIA

Meliaceae, the mahogany family of flowering plants, of the order Sapindales, comprises 51 genera and about 575 species of trees and (rarely) shrubs, native to tropical and subtropical regions. Most members of the family have large compound leaves, with the leaflets arranged in the form of a feather, and branched flower clusters. The fruit is fleshy and coloured or a leathery capsule.

The China tree (Melia azedarach), also called chinaberry, bead tree, and Persian lilac, is an ornamental deciduous Asian tree with round yellow fruits, often cultivated in many tropical and warm temperate areas. The adult tree has a rounded crown, and commonly measures attains a height of 7-12 metres, however in exceptional circumstances M. azedarach can attain a height of 45 metres.

The flowers are small and highly fragrant, with five pale purple or lilac petals, growing in clusters. The fruit is a drupe, marble-sized, light yellow at maturity, hanging on the tree all winter, and gradually becoming wrinkled and almost white. The leaves are up to 50 cm long, alternate, long-petioled, 2 or 3 times compound (odd-pinnate); the leaflets are dark green above and lighter green below, with serrate margins.

It is a common ornamental street tree in Melbourne, but it must noted that fruits are poisonous to humans if eaten in quantity. However, like those of the Yew tree, these toxins are not harmful to birds, who gorge themselves on the fruit, eventually reaching a "drunken" state. Leaves have been used as a natural insecticide to keep with stored food, but must not be eaten as they are highly poisonous to humans. Today it is considered an invasive species as its seeds sprout easily and are transported by birds far and wide.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.