While days have become shorter, forests browner, and the sky grayer here in the North, I thought to share some colour splashes with you.

Pico in the Azores is not in the tropics, but it can really make you feel so. Temperatures don’t drop below 20 degrees Celsius during the night in summer, rain clouds and the sun mixed together are a guarantee for a humid and hot atmosphere. Luckily, the ocean is never far on this little jewel as you can see in my other story about the island: The Big Blue.

The vegetation is lush and the flowers astonishing. We drove around the island and suddenly saw flowers that reminded us of the tropics.

Finding out what kind of flower the above is, we were surprised to learn it belongs to the ginger family. This beauty is a Kahili Ginger or Ginger lily (Girlandenblume oder Schmetterlingslilie auf Deutsch, Hedychium gardnerianum) and has quite a size. I was mesmerized. Its original home lies in the Himalaya in Bhutan, Nepal, and India. Not the tropics either, but exotic in any case.

Have you ever seen something like it?

The Azores are very famous for the hydrangea (Hortensie auf Deutsch), which bloom earlier in the year, but we still found some. Below is one photograph that I thought goes so well together with those pinkish to yellow flowers.

Oh, by the way, in brackets I sometimes translate the name of the plants and animals into German, so that my German speaking readers don’t need to translate the names of the beauties they see in the pictures. Moreover, I now and then add the latin name for easy identification in all languages :-).

The following is a member of the so called morning-glory family (Prachtwinde) and unfortunately a pest in the Azores. It is a twining and creeping plant overgrowing other plants quite fast. Still, look at this mind-boggling symmetry and colour palette.

Last, but not least, the roadside surprised with a flower you may know from florists or even supermarkets. Do you recognize it?

It goes by the fitting name of Belladonna lily (Belladonna Lilie oder Echte Amaryllis auf Deutsch), which in Italian means “beautiful woman” lily. Maybe, for a change, it is more famous under the latin name: Amaryllis. Very easy to learn for all biologists out there who need to memorize latin names: Amaryllis belladonna :0).
Her home is in the Cape Province of South Africa.

Symbolically and digitally I would herewith like to give you, my dearest reader, a flower of gratitude. May you be surrounded by beauty and colour splashes and soak it up whenever you realize it.

Warm regards,

Daniela

 

See and read more of the Azores: Ilha do Pico, The Big Blue, O Cantinho da Emilía