At the beginning of 2025, I started taking pictures of every interesting looking flower that I saw in my garden, as well as any that I saw in my neighborhood and in nearby parks. I also visited several local nurseries and took images of every flower that looked interesting. To say the least, it was a steep-learning curve for a person who studied fossils, rocks, and minerals for most of his life and who generally ignored flowers. THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT FLOWERS. Now, however, I greatly appreciate the diversity, and I am constantly taking images of new ones. Thus, I can say that I honestly like learning new things.
I relied heavily on my wife’s vast knowledge of plants and flowers. Also, the internet proved to be invaluable tool in identifying some the new plants that I encountered. I never went on private property, except, with permission, on a few rare exceptions. I thank those property owners who gave me permission to trespass. They were always friendly, even though some they probably thought I was slightly unhinged.
In this post and several that follow, I have selected (it was not easy!) some of the new flowers I “discovered.”
HIBISCUS
Most hibiscus flowers were derived from eight ancestral varieties that were originally native to tropical eastern Asia. The Hibiscus flower has petals that overlap one another in a circular pattern. Today, there are numerous cultivated [i.e., cultivars] found in nurseries throughout the world. An image of Hibiscus is on the National emblem in South Korea. It is also the state flower of Hawaii.
This flower can be an annual (short-lived) or a perennial (long-lived). It can be found on small trees, up to about 15 feet tall. It likes full sunlight. Its large lowers attract bees, butterflies, and humans. Its flowers can be white, red, pink, blue, orange, peach, or yellow.
Like most flowers, it is speculated that Hibicus evolved from an ancestral form about 135 million years ago, when Gondwanaland broke up from Pangea.
Each hibiscus flower has both male and female parts. The ovary of the flower lies in the main structure in the center of the hibiscus flower. The pistil is long and tubular. The five “hairy” red structures at the top of the pistil make up the stigma, which is where the pollen is collected. Bracts are leaf-like structures positioned beneath a flower. Brachs are NOT petals of a flower. For those who want to know, its flowers exhibit the solitary cyme kind of inflorescence.
Three color varieties of Hibiscus. Each of these flowers shown above is about human-hand size.
Classification
Order Malvales
Family Malvacease
Genus Hibiscus
Type Species H. rosa sinensis [which has a large and conspicuous trumpet-shaped flower]. Linnaeus, who named countless species of flowers and animals, also named this flower.
Note: There is a single Hibiscus small tree (about 15 feet tall) in my neighborhood. Since early spring of this year (2025), it has had numerous blooms on it. And, now that it is August, it is still blooming (mostly at the top of the plant).
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