Santa Monica, California ~ October 28, 2006
This is not the image I have when I think of Santa Monica - nor is it the image I have when I think of October. These blossoms were a pleasant surprise on a visit in 2006 when we stopped to get something at a boutique grocery store on Montana Avenue.
The flowers were wonderful, but what really surprised me was where they came from. . . .
I hadn't expected to see this huge pink tree reaching for the sky!
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3 comments:
Bougainvillea, methinks! We had some red ones in our back yard by the pool...they almost took down the fence and would easily have grown into trees if we hadn't pruned them back. Trouble is, here it's cold in the winter (relatively speaking) so they usually "die." Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't. They do well in southern Florida, though.
Hope you are well!
That isn't bougainvillea. It's a silk floss tree, also known as a kapok tree--chorisia speciosa. We have a lot of them here in San Bernardino and all over SoCal. They bloom in early fall, starting in September and continuing into October-- meaning they are blooming right now.
I have started these trees from seed, but I'll resist the temptation to write a blog entry about them right here and now--that wouldn't be very nice, would it? But I think I'll go take a few chorisia pictures of my own!
First, I'm glad I didn't miss this, what a stunning flower tree! Second, I happy Raksha identified the tree because I was certain Jacob had it wrong (rare, I know)... and I'm no botanist either, but we have a LOT of bougainvillea here, and although they do grow very big, it's not quite a tree like this.
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