Thursday, September 14, 2017

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day September

It is already September, the flowers have been blooming for quite sometime. In a little while they will produce pods, mature, dehisce and die. These are the annuals providing us much colors during the dry season. Of course you know that our dry season is still more of dry, it only rains when there are typhoons looming in the horizon, and the rains come when they come into the Philippine Area of Responsibility (PAR).

Yesterday i am supposed to visit the Orchid Show, but even at very early morning the sky looks so hot, and that was true till the sun sets. I decided not to view the garden show, i might go there tomorrow. The disadvantage is that the flowers in the landscape garden competitions would have already been suffering wilting, dying and so on after days of so much sun and heat. This morning i woke up with pitter-patter outside! It was raining, and it is because there is a typhoon almost near PAR. Oh it is already noontime and the sun hasn't showed up yet, it might be more wet tomorrow when it is already here. But never mind, i prefer the rains more than the sun and heat.

So here are some of our blooms in my yard in the province.

 The biggest flowering single plant at the side of our house is a blue Duranta erecta. It is already a tall bush maybe 12ft high with lots of blooms very well loved by insects mostly butterflies.

Orange emigrant, Catopsilia sp.

It is always teeming with butterflies during the rainy season. So my FB friends get lots of butterfly photos. How can you resist the view when lots of butterflies are fluttering and nectaring on a single plant!

Common Lime (Papilio demoleus demoleus) and Great Eggfly (Hypolimnas bolina philippensis)

 Scarlet Mormon, Papilio deiphobus ledebouria

It is the biggest among the butterflies visiting the duranta. It truly is an eye catcher, but photographing it is difficult because the forewings flutter non-stop, and it doesn't stop long on a flower like the others. It only sips in one flower in a bunch then transfer to another bunch with a big leap. 

 the only hippeastrum that blooms several times per year, Hippeastrum reticulatum var Striatifolium (not sure of the ID) 

 Ixora javanica, favorite of the Common Mormon

Ixora chinensis

Turnera subulata

Turnera subulata flowers only in the morning, close at noon




 ...it is favored by bees, stingless bees and a few small butterflies

 Wedelia trilobata a volunteer groundcover at the side street opposite the house

 ...it is visited mostly by small butterflies like this Plains Cupid, together with the Grass Blues


 Impatiens balsamina

These volunteer Impatiens balsamina occupies most of the ground if we did not uproot most of them. Formerly, there also are pink and whites, but only the purple are dominant now, with a few whites. 

 Not many butterflies visit them, but this skipper seem to be glad with it. There are also a few of them which frequent this.


 

Impatiens balsamina at the left and Stachetarpheta jamaicensis at right.

Tigers and crows love these porter weed

Heliconia, this grows so fast and together with the crab claw we uprooted them together with their rhizomes. We dumped them, as they get invasive, but there still are a few plants somewhere not in the main clump.

I only have 2 Episcias, the red and yellow. I am trying to cross-pollinate them, but i forgot to put the labels, so next time i will.

 the yellow is more palatable for some munching larvae

 Weeds at the side of the road outside our fence, also visited by butterflies. Even if you are a weed, i will not uproot you if butterflies like to visit you, either as host plant or nectar plant. 
 
Vitex negundo

metallic blue insect

Vitex negundo is a big bush loved also by some butterflies in the wild. It is actually a medicinal plant whose leaves are made into cough remedies. There already are capsules of this in the market as Plemex and Ascof, already registered.

a blue butterfly on my hoya

Moths or a butterflies visiting my hoya blooms will not escape my camera. Be it day or night i am prepared to document you. 

So i hope you enjoyed visiting my garden blooms, just like those butterflies! Thank you so much my Blogger Friends. 

20 comments:

  1. So beautiful, the metallic insect on that plant and the bee in the flower of Turnera subulata are my favorites but all photographs are beautiful. As I said already before the Duranta shrub is wonderful, but also the Scarlet Maron butterfly. You really live in a wonderful world with such a colorful nature, so different from our piece of world. Real autumn has arrived here with stormy weather and it's raining cats and dogs for days and days, brrrr.

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    1. To tell you frankly Judy, this is my first time to see that metallic insect, in the more than midyear of my accumulated earthly existence, hahaha! Yes we always have the wonderful colors, but not as beautiful as your autumn. I still dream of experiencing the autumn not only its colors, but also walking barefoot on the dried fallen leaves. That has been a perennial dream.

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  2. You always have such lovely flowers, it makes where I live seem black-and-white by comparison.

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    1. Oh yes Al, we don't have periods devoid of flowers, colors and greens very much opposite of your winter. They just lessen but we still have them all year round.

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  3. What a feast for the eyes! So many gorgeous plants and pollinators so beautifully photographed! It's fascinating to see the plants attracting butterflies and bees in your part of the world. I hope that the typhoon wasn't too destructive.

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    1. Thank you so much Sarah, you are so kind. Our typhoons are always destructive to the most vulnerable types of environment and some part of society which is very exposed to them.

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  4. Wow! There are many beautiful flowers. Your photos are very beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

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  5. Your blooms and your butterflies are gorgeous! That Duranta erecta is especially spectacular and your Plains Cupid butterfly looks very much like the Gray Hairstreaks that visit my garden.

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    1. Yes Dorothy, those Plains Cupid and the Hairstreaks are in the same family so they look the same. The Lycaenids is a very big group of those smaller butterflies.

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  6. Beautiful flowers, and the bee and butterfly photos are amazing!
    Happy Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!

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    1. Thank you Lea for coming over and have sometime looking at my shots.

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  7. such a beautiful collection of photographs....I have real difficulty photographing butterflies so I am very impressed by these.

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    1. Well it is very difficult photographing them here as we are very hot in the farm. They are more cooperative in our highlands in the Cordilleras, where temps are lower.

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  8. I enjoyed your blue insect; it is so unusual. Well, it is unusual to me. Thank you for sharing on GBBD it was a pleasure seeing everything.
    Jeannie @ GetMeToTheCountry.Blogspot.com

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    1. Hi Jeannie, actually it is my first time also to see it in the so plenty of years of my existence. Thanks for dropping by.

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  9. I'm glad you got some rains, even if it brings some cloudy days. Your plants and the butterflies are so beautiful! This is a wonderful post. :)

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    1. Thank you so much Beth, rains really releases a lot of my stresses and the plants' too!

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  10. Hi Andrea, I am back over here on Blogger!! Lovely to see your lovely pictures of flowers and butterflies. You have certainly captured some amazing flowers. Things are starting to finish off here for the autumn.

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    1. Oh well, you will like more my new butterfly photos after 2 weeks of absence or not posting. Anyway, you see them in FB. Thanks much. Yours will start to hibernate again.

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