Fragrant Shrub..

I bought a small shrub of Aglaia dupperreana from a night market during the Chinese New Year season which was recommended by the nursery staff as a very fragrant plant. And indeed, it is extremely fragrant!

               Small yellow inflorescences!                        Sweet-smelling Flowers

Recently my plant has been flowering profusely and bear flowers on every branch! The flowers are yellow and oval in shape, with no distinct petals. Look like a bunch of berries, the fragrant from these flowers is hard to describe. It is more of a very fruity and berry-like fragrant, rather than the typical flora scent.

The fragrant lingers around the area and as the wind blows, the scent of it is heavenly! Even my neighbours came out to take a look of this plant! Aglaia dupperreana is an easy plant to grow, and they need at least 5 hours of direct sunlight and lots of watering. Their leaves are in the shape of elongated ovals and thin.

I would say this is a plant you must have if you like fragrant and flowering plants!

Flowering Hoya…

This Hoya obscura is a cutting I got from Wilson three months ago. I am surprised by this plant, although its a cutting, it flowers for me the third time! I potted it in an equal mix of long-fibre sphagnum and perlite, with watering every day.

                                                   

                                                                               Hoya obscura

Just like it cousin Hoya lacunosa, the umbels of flowers resembles miniature Tu-Tu Kueh. The leaves are leathery and stiff.When grown under good sunlight, the leaves can bear a hint of red, which makes the plant look very attractive!

                  A pair of young leaves                                 Can you see the new shoot?

Also, the plant started to put out new shoots and leaves from the existing leaf nodes and even on the flower spike! Special thing about Hoyas is that new flowers will grow from the same flower spike over and over again, and after a long time the spike looks like cordyceps!

My blog is also on Twitter now!

Being a new age gardener and bridging technology to gardening, I have integrated the new Twitter platform for my blog! Twitter is now a platform where users can ask questions or share their experiences and get answers and comments not only from me, but also other like-minded friends!

                                                           

I will also post short notes or announcements about latest gardening events on Twitter, which will also be shown on the Twitter link on the right panel of this page. As this is a new platform, there is a learning curve for everyone, there will be tweaks and bugs on this new platform and I hope everyone will eventually get used to it and use it as a platform to ask questions and share problems!

My Twitter link is http://twitter.com/Dreamandgrowit

Flowering Sugarcane!!

I was at Hortpark attending Wilson’s Easter gardening talk last Saturday. He brought me to see a flowering Sugarcane plant (Saccharum officinarum)! This was the first time I saw sugarcane flowering and was amazed by the thin inflorescence it put out. The flowers are very similar to many species of grasses, as it belongs to the Poaceae family.

 

 

Like grasses, the inflorescence is put out high up above all its leaves and the tiny flowers opened on the extended flower stalks. The flowers do not have any showy petals and and not very visible. The inflorescence is beige in colour and very eye catching when you can see it sway side to side in the wind!