Who among you will disagree that these look like birds? To me they are converging on a feeder busy getting their share of seeds! They are very much concentrated on picking the seeds and nothing around will disturb those poses.
I've known this as Pedilanthus tithymaloides, although newer references said that this previous name is subsumed by the newer name Euphorbia tithymaloides. Changing scientific names is not new, but i am still amazed to find it has accumulated at least 32 names to itself. That doesn't include yet the so many local terms in my country, that differ depending on the dialect of the place. Our Batangas Tagalog term for it is "swerda or suwerda". I don't know how it came along, or where it came from but that's just it.
And my 2nd amazement is in reading that it came from the subtropical North and Central America. Oh, so it is an immigrant or naturalized plant here with us. Be that as it may, we learned to love them. We have a long hedge of these when we were kids, trimmed periodically on top and both sides, looking so neat and organized. And a secret i will reveal is that during those days we sometimes took the flap of the 'bird's head' to reveal the nectar, then we sipped it, very nice taste! Now that we're adults i once asked an equally adult officemate from a province very far from us if they as kids sipped the nectar too. And we were so happy confirming we had the same experience. I wonder why kids those times are prone to sip nectar! My last amazement was that it is highly toxic, thanks God we didn't taste the milky sap!
What about you?
