Saturday, October 31, 2015

Mom, Dad and Descendants...

Here I am again... trying to resurrect from the ashes and blogging again. To close down this month, let me talk about my pet project for the past 5 years plus: the search for the Alstonia scholaris. If you are as obsessed with this tree as I am, search my blog for "Alstonia" and "Hoa Sua" and you will find a lot of information related to this.
The photo of this Alstonia scholaris is taken at 6:23 PM on Thursday, October 29th, 2015 in the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden (FTBG.) Its location on earth is: Latitude, 25:40:32.74 - and Longitude, -80:16:30.28. After so many years, I am happy to learn that the Alstonia scholaris can flower successively twice, peaking in mid-month and then again at the end of October in a year with lots of rain like this is. This tree peaked on October 12th and again right now, at the end of October. On the date of this photo, the sweet scent permeated the surrounding air, especially when you are downwind. The ground around the tree looks sandy white, but that is not sand. They are the tiny milky white flowers that fall as rain all day and night long. A truly beautiful site! I can now say for certain that for me, the scent is sweet, delightful and not pungent and overpowering at all. It begins at dusk and lasts until dawn. This tree, with my help, is the proud Mom (and me as surrogate Dad, I guess) of a whole bunch of siblings from the seeds I germinated in March 2012, 3 and a half years ago. I now have one in my backyard that is about 20 feet tall, and three more found their permanent home in Montgomery Botanical Center (search Montgomery in my blog) where they are growing beautifully. I am trying to grow three more as bonzai although I have no such skill as yet. I want to learn about how long before these trees will begin to bloom... Return here in a few years, give or take one or two... Have you had enough of Alstonia?
Mom Tree

1 comment:

Lan said...

Here is the answer: 5 years 7 months. One of the three Alstonia scholoaris that I germinated in March 2012 and planted at the MBC has flowered at the end of October 2017. It is beautiful and full of flowers. I am so happy I did it!