Sunday, March 15, 2015

Spring time in my Garden -3

Hibiscus, also known as Rose Mallow, Shoe Flower, China rose is a very beautiful flower and quite common in India, especially in South India. These are grown for their showy and colourful flowers and also as shrubs in the garden. These are evergreen shrubs and flower through out the year. 

They require very less maintenance except for lots of pests and bugs. They also flower abundantly, hence hit with us Indians and other countries, like China, Hawaii and Korea etc....They contain many species which are both annual and perennial varieties. 

These are known as Japakusuma or Japa Pushpa in Sanskrit, Mandaaram in Telugu and GuDDhal in Hindi. These flowers are offered to Lord Ganesha, Kali or Durga, Shiva and Sun God as their favorite flowers. In general used as offering to any gos or goddess in our homes.

I prefer the local varieties to the hybrid ones. The hybrid ones give big flowers in many colours but they don't have the beauty of the local ones.

 This is only one hybrid variety I have as it was gifted to me.
 This is baby pink multi petaled one.
 This is lemon yellow multi petaled one.
This is a different shade of yellow, shade of sandal wood.
 This is lavender coloured multi petaled one.

Below are two varieties of orange colured flowers
  .

 This is tomato red coloured one
The one above is darkest red flower, which is not clear in the pic.
This one below is the single petaled local variety mostly in red, white and light pink colours. But the red one is most popular.
Here is my flower basket for Puja(daily prayers) filled with flowers form my garden.

Hibiscus, is used in ayurveda as it has medicinal properties. Tea made out of these flowers is quite popular in many countries. Paste of these flowers and its leaves, applies to hair make them long, lustrous, healthy and black colour. So women from South India use this as a hair tonic.

Watch out for more.......

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