Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Cockspur coral tree: uruguayan national flower















Beautiful, isn't it?





There is a legend over here, and also a song, that tells about an indigenous princess of a singular beauty.

In defense of her people while fighting against the conquerors she was made prisioner and sentenced to die in blaze.

While princess dying, the night came over; the morning after people found instead of the dead princess a tree with amazing flowers: so red as the fire and so lovely as the princess.


This tree, named "ceibo" in our language, lives in river's banks, and it's latin name is Erythrina cristagalli.
In spring time it becomes completely red until the first month of fall, in several floral waves.
Longs spikes of pea-liked flowers of about 2 inches long.

Then, in fall, it starts loosing the foliage and go dormant in the coldest month. Personally I prune it down just to 2 inches up from the soil.
Next season I get a low plant of long and arched branches ending in marvellous red.


Pitifuly it's very agressed by spider-mite, aphs, scars and some fungus. Need continuous checking for premature detection and quick solving.
See you soon, bye bye !
Mama Flora

1 comment:

Dan said...

I recently came a across a similar legend of the Ceibo that I posted to by blog today.