Last year my friend Monique showed me a beautiful flowering tree she had in het back yard. After blooming season, she saved me some cuttings which lived in a spaghetti sauce jar in the corner of my kitchen all winter. Slowly but surely roots and leaves started growing. It took a while but finally (with the help of Google) we figured out that the tree was called 'confederate rose'. It is not actually a rose but a hibiscus (hibiscus mutabilis for those who are really interested). The nickname comes from the fact that it does so well in the southern United States.
So after the worst of the Texas winter cold (yes, it had been a pretty cold winter by Texas standards) had passed, I planted the twigs in the yard. The first two months not much happened but they didn't die either. Wait and see....
Imagine my surprise when we came back from our summer holidays and it had really started growing. Now we needed to wait for the flowers.
This week we were rewarded. The amazing thing about this tree is that the flowers change color. When they first come out of their buds the flowers are white and then they slowly (over the course of about a day) change to dark pink. Beautiful!
Here is what it looks like when one flower opens a bit earlier than the next.
Really pleased and amazed!
No comments:
Post a Comment