Flower for tomorrow - Gomphrena globosa - Globe Amaranth

Just made it, one minute to midnight. Flower for tomorrow, the bachelor's button.

Family: Amaranthaceae

Origin: India

Solanum melongena - Eggplant

Brinjals are not everyone's type of food. Some kids will never eat it and some adults too I suppose. I love it when it is cooked with a generous topping of blended fresh chilli and garlic, indonesian style. I've always thought that the colour of brinjals is purple until I saw this small plant with white brinjal fruits dangling from its frail branches.

Common names: Eggplant, brinjal

Family: Solanaceae

And then I saw the flowers - pretty purple petals made transluscent by the backlighting provided by the morning sun.

Hibiscus

A flower to bring cheer to all on a day when the sun takes a break. The hibiscus is my favourite flower because it is so common. Where other flowering plants raise their value by not showing off their flowers often enough, the hibiscus blooms merrily in all colours and forms all the time. I love them for their generous appearances especially in the gardens of private houses and they brighten up my day whenever I drive past hibiscus shrubs that are loaded with flowers - red, yellow, pink, peach, white and vibrant orange like this one here:

Calotropis gigantea - Crown flower （牛角瓜 - niu2 jiao3 gua1)

I first saw these crown flower shrubs a few months ago. A surprise awaited me. More than the delightful flowers before me, there were fruits.
They start off looking like huge green marbles.

As they mature they change their shape.

When they ripen they burst open revealing seeds like this:
Maybe we can use these cotton-like fibres for stuffing pillows.
When the seeds are dispersed, this is what becomes of the fruit.

Butterflies of the world

There are a hundred and fifty thousand butterfly and moth species in the world.

Chasing butterflies

Still chasing butterflies...

Passing through...

Butterflies on my mind

Leaving the flowers behind

for a while, indefinitely

Butterflies on my mind

fluttering, lingering, thinking

going for a break...

Jasminum sambuc - Jasmines

Jasmines - sweet,fragrant flowers that I have always associated with Little India in Serangoon Road. Images of garlands for sale as prayer offering in temples, strands and strands of these flowers on the shiny black hair of Indian women during festivals always come to mind. There are many varieties of jasmines and what I have here can be found in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Now for an appreciation of one particular type of jasmine flowers:

Jasminum sambuc

Arabian jasmine

Family: Oleaceae

Origin: India

Now for the imitations that are no less beautiful. Believe it or not, the deocrative item in the 3 photos below is not made up of real jasmine flowers. The exhibit was the handiwork of Thai vocational students for weddings. Thai drivers have on their dashboard a sort of mini shrine decorated with flowers like jasmines.Strands of Jasmines for the hair. Seen in Little India.

Look at what the actress in wearing on her hair.

Flora and Fauna

Over the weekend, I met with the good fortune of stumbling upon two books in an MPH bookstore that were really worth their weight in gold. Each of these hardcover books printed on high-quality paper with beautiful glossy photos were going for just under $17 each with a futher discount of 10%. There were around 280 pages in each book. What I like about them is that they are well-written and organised making reading of such books a joy rather than a pain and a strain on the eyes. These have been my most precious finds in the bookshops this month. I actually bought the book on birds on one ocassion and went back to get the one on butterflies the next day. Even the additional expenditure on train fare was nothing compared with what I will be reaping from these books in years to come.

I knew about these stamp issues some time back. Never got the time to get them and since I am not a serious stamp collector, I made no effort to make the trip to the post office to get them. By chance I saw this complete set of Flora and Fauna definitive stamps at a post office counter and how could I not buy them because there is so much beauty in the artwork? So here they are:
An attractive cover for the stamps.

Memecylon caeruleum

Fascinating flowers and I never get tired of them. Blue and purple and just look at those incredible patterns. Are they real? Yes they are. Such variety in just one shrub. Someone has to tear me away from the plant each time or I'll be camping in front of it overnight to see what happens to the flowers, buds and fruits the next morning.

Nature and Art

Art, History and Nature come together in this exhibition "Empire of Nature" currently taking place at the National Museum. I've always admired the drawings in the William Faquhar Collection that I have seen here and there. So when I learned that for the first time the entire 477 drawings made as recordings of the flora and fauna in this region are being displayed in the National Museum, I was simply thrilled.

The drawings were superb as can be seen from the samples on the brochures of the exhibition. The drawings were educational as well as appealing artistically. I simply could not go through such an excellent collection of drawings passively.
So I decided to make sketches of some of the drawings, that I had found interesting just so that I have a record of my visit. My drawings below are not meant to be artistic endeavours, just evidence that I have spent time to study closely the details recorded by the artist as observed by him. The actual painting of this Flying Lemur was executed in meticulous detail and you cannot imagine how fine the lines are. Though the depiction of this Flying Lemur may be disproportionate, I find that the face of the Lemur is gentle with large eyes on a small face and yet the way it held on to the branch shows that this animal is strong in survival instincts. This may not be a realistic depiction of an owl but nevertheless the artist had, through the use of colour and patterns, highlighted the beauty of the feathers which I would not have noticed if I had just looked at this painting passively.This watermelon is not round but it does not matter to me. I was drawn to the arrangement of the seeds in the original painting that was in colour. I wondered if the stylish patterns of the seeds were what the artist actually saw or were they just how he wanted them to look in his painting. We often look at what is before us and ignore the fact that there are always two sides to a coin, or leaf, or anything in life.
A typical botanical drawing that was in colour. In just one depiction of this palm, you can see how the leaves look when it is at the peak of its life and how it looks through various stages of wilting.
I did this quick sketch because I have seen this bird before.
I made this drawing from a painting of a very happy mudskipper. It looked so happy that it could almost be a cartoon character. The artist sure had a sense of humour because right next ot it was another mudskipper looking like all the mud in the world has disappeared.
I never knew that pufferfish have such elaborate patterns on their bodies.