Flame of the Forest
Butea monosperma
(bew-tee-uh) (mon-oh-SPER-muh)
This was blooming at Flamingo Gardens. It was a small tree that was pretty much covered with these orange flowers. This native to Southeast Asia and India has several synonyms including Bastard Teak, Parrott Tree and Dhak. It has several industrial and medicinal uses as well as being a handsome ornamental. This particular tree had been trained to about ten feet although it can grow to 50 feet in the wild. The trunk was twisted and knarly. I didn’t get to see the foliage as the leaves fall off before the tree begins to flower. The buds were interesting with an almost black velvety appearance.
I took both of these pictures with Karen’s D80 and the 60mm Nikkor-Micro. It did pretty well as I remember thinking at the time the flowers were almost naturally over saturated. The color was just stunning. The D80 is nice as it shoots a huge file, which is still bigger than a D70 file even if you crop it.
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