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?

Woodlawn Park Cemetery

Little Havana (Spanish: La Pequeña Habana) is a neighborhood in the city of Miami, with many Cuban immigrant residents. It is situated NorthEast of the City of Coral Gables. Woodlawn Park cemetery is in the Little Havana neighborhood and is a fascinating place to stop by to check out its spooky architectural tombs and grave markers, especially on a gloomy day of Miami like today due to hurricane Gustav nearby. This cemetery looks impressive (to me) especially in this perfectly spooky cloudy day. It has a large number of gothic statues, angels, madonnas and other religious figures.

I was also looking for a tree for some time and learned from a botanical professor of the Florida International University in Miami (Thank You!) that it can be found in this neighborhood. Sure enough, it's the tall tree you see in this photo taken from lot #3 of this cemetery, at the corner of SW 33rd Avenue and 10th Street. The tree is an Alstonia Scholaris, also known as the "Devil Tree" of India. Extract from the bark of this tree (Ditamine bark) is used in India to treat malarial fever, dysentery; and its light wood is used for coffins in Ceylon. So it's fitting and I am happy to find this tree here.

But I am attracted to this tree so that I can learn about the scent of its flowers. The insert shows the flowers on this tree today, many of the tiny 1cm size star-shaped milky white flowers (that's its name in Vietnamese: Milk Flower) have dropped and can be collected from the ground; and I have got a handful of them. It's very hard to discern any scent out of them so I'll have to return another time to catch this tree at its peak flowering time. May be I should knock on the front door of the house with the red roof and ask them to let me know when the best time is.