Saturday, October 04, 2008

Flowers - simple to complex

When I first drew a flower as a child, the flower looked like this Kopsia flavida flower. My flowers always had 5 simple petals that are either round or oval in shape no matter how many times I drew them.
But in my child's limited view, I could not have drawn them to look like the flowers of the Ruellia brittoniana (Desert Petunia).
Like life, there is so much variety amongst flowers. Other than the shape of the petals, some flowers have distinctive features like the flower of the Strophanthus gratus(Climbing Oleander).When I first saw the flowers I thought that they must have come from some exotic land like Africa and I was right.
What I could not stop to marvel at is how the flowers of the Lagerstroemia indica (Crepe Myrtle) from Japan and China reached this level of sophistication where the flowers are many times removed from the basic form of the Kopsia flavida.
Finally, what more is there to say about the flowers of the Torch ginger - Etlingera elatior 'pink' here except that it impresses through sheer size and quantity of petals.

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