Saturday, January 3, 2009

serious botany

Many people (meaning me) don't know that Thomas Edison had any interest in botany - he did. In fact, he and his friends Ford and Firestone were trying to figure out a way to grow rubber trees domestically to cut down the cost on car tires. In addition, Edison's wife was an avid gardener. So the Winter Estates are filled with unusual plants; in fact, some of them are now illegal to import to the US. One of the first things i saw (but couldn't get a non-blurry picture of, sorry) was this HUGE bougainvillea - it was a wall of plant : Yes, that's a streetlamp next to it. Even blurry that's impressive considering that the plant commonly looks like this : (my dad's yard) It was Florida so there was citrus, but citrus i've never seen or even heard of : And plants that looked like they were out of a dream : I don't remember botany being this interesting in school.

2 comments:

Rea said...

We had bougenvilla and lipstick plant in our yard in Arizona!

Niki said...

I remember your bougenvilla, but not the lipstick plant - i swear i've never seen one before.