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Plumeria
jandey1

Plumeria Whiplash, aka PARADISE!

jandey1
10 years ago

My family finally made the pilgrimage to the "motherland of plumania", as my husband calls it. It's known to the natives as just "Kauai".

First off, let me say that if you love plumeria but don't yet suspect that you may have bitten off more than you can chew with your 40 or 50 potted sticks, you should go.

If you KNOW you've bitten off more than you can chew with your 80 or 90 potted sticks, you should go just to see what you're in for in several years.

You know what--just go! It's a magnificent, friendly, laid-back place with some incredible sights above and beyond the beautiful flora. The people were lovely and very tolerant of the bumbling tourists, a wonderful vacation spot!

Day One, we arrive at our lovely condo to find it covered in flowers:


Usually I have to go to a florist to find so many orchids in bloom at once!

Then, everywhere we go there are towering Singapores:


These do not grow compact by any stretch of the imagination! My 5-year-old climbed several of them and I can tell you they get a good 20 feet tall. They were the most common trees around the resorts on the south side of the island.

Talk about tall again:


This is an unknown dark pink with big flowers and a light scent. Those are parking spaces beneath it and a carport nearby.

This is the dark pink in a bowl of Singapores, Lei Rainbow, and probably a Kauka Wilder--which also smells great, btw:

Just for proportions, this is one of the shortest mature trees I saw in Kauai, an unknown light pink with a great scent:


It was on private property so I just picked up a dropped bloom outside the fence, but it was one of the best smelling blooms we ran across. And believe me, I smelled a lot of plumies, LOL!

I kept my eyes peeled for a great orange like Dutch Orange, and from a distance the Lei Rainbow blooms look quite orange. Sneaky things! And LRs were everywhere on the island:

There were very few Celadines to be seen, but all were of a manageable size, unlike this beast:


This sweet, innocent blushing plumie is Edi Moragne, one of the top two best-smelling plumeria ever. This bloom dropped off a monster 20-ft tree that makes my little two-tipper look insignificant. She ain't dainty, that's for sure! Good news is the blooms last a very long time, smell great and the leaves on the two Edi trees I saw were the biggest healthiest leaves I saw on any plumies anywhere. (That will make me feel better in a few years when I'm hauling my 12-ft tree inside for the winter.)

Wish I knew what this one was! I saw the same red in several places and it's the Hilo/Kimi Beauty-type dark red. The trees were all huge and the blooms smelled like Dr. Pepper:

The flowers aren't huge but it was blooming profusely:

Here's the tree:


Imagine my excitement when I noticed a few broken branches on the wall beneath this red, but when I picked them up they were all dried out :(

There was a smaller version in a yard many towns away, too:


I think it must be fairly common on Kauai. Does anyone have any ideas of what it might be?

My biggest disappointment with the plumies on Kauai was the lack of broken branches on the ground beneath them. Someone needs to have a talk with the gardeners on that island about being more careless in their clean-up efforts. Since I won't just take branches off trees I was relying on the laziness of groundskeepers for some gleanings! Harrumph!

I'll have to continue this vacation thread later; still have many more photos to download and share! Hope you enjoyed 'em!
Jen

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