More flora from the Golden Palm resort

I am yet to put a name to most of what I saw at the Golden Palms, but I simply could not resist sharing. The colours and the exhuberance of the plants were such a joy!

The firecracker plant (picture on the right) was in bloom. I learnt that its botanical name is Russelia equisetiformis and that, surprisingly, it too, like the snap dragon (antirrhinum) and the wish bone flower (torrenia indica), belongs to the dog flower family.

The star cluster flower (pentas lanceolata) was everywhere - this time in white!

The portulacas were clearly getting a lot of the sun, judging from their size.

The colors of these flowers was quite simply breathtaking!

The poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) was rather striking with its reds

The Golden Palms resort and spa

14 acres of lush foliage was promised and thats exactly what the Golden Palms had to offer. While the others cooled off at the pool or in the indoor game area, some of us wandered through the well chosen and well cared for tropical vegetation.

I loved the trees around the tennis courts

and the many flowers, full in bloom thanks to the plentiful sun

Two trees in particular were extremely interesting -- the tall white one in the picture to the right -- presumably a century tree; and the strange one in the picture to the left that had massive 'roots' coming off its trunk, reaching for the ground...

The walkway around the buildings and the pool made for a good jogging/walking path

We ran into what looked like a gooseberry (amla) tree

and sure enough, there were the tell tale berries...

But thats not all, there were plenty of plants in riotous colours, full of berries, fruit and flowers. To the observant eye there were many exotic spiders, busy spinning their webs; there were creepers inching upwards and ephiphytes throwing their roots downwards; and there were the elegant butterflies, the common lime and the common emigrant. More pictures and stories to come..

Saw mill

I havent seen a whole lot of saw mills, but this one seemed exceptionally neat and 'green'.
About an hour from Bangalore.

Skywatch Friday

A stormy afternoon in Bangalore and my entry to this week's Skywatch Friday

What's blooming

• The fiery orange reds of the african tulip tree, spathodia campanulata
• The yellows of the cassia siamea
• The beautiful reds of the bottle brush tree.
• The wonderfully fragrant whites of the millingtonia hortensis
• The 52nd edition of the Festival of the Trees.

The ubiquitous roadside gulmohar

Much space has been devoted on this blog to the gulmohar and to roadside trees; the sight of a roadside tree, in all probability a gulmohar or a copperpod, that has one entire side chopped off to make way for a building never fails to move me. It seems so off balance, a deliberate mutation. Its good to see that most of the trees that are being planted now in the city are being placed along the center of the roads, giving them the space to grow out their branches on either side.

Know your grasses