Flowers and Plants from Jamaica!

From our recent trip to Jamaica, I have understood that most of the flowers and plants which are in India are also in Jamaica! Warm weather plants I guess. It was so nice to see all these beautiful plants; it made me nostalgic. My mom had all these plants in her gardens at one point or the other (She is going to miss gardening after they move into their apartment after dad's retirement).

Anand slept in on the last day of our stay in Jamaica (March 2014) but Megha was up and ready to head out! We stopped by to get breakfast. Here she is with her favorite books, Dr. Suess: Green Eggs and Ham and Fast Train Slow Train (from Thomas the Train series). Nice view isnt it?

The weather was a little cloudy.

After breakfast, we set out to take a walk around the resort to capture the pictures of the flowers.
I do not remember the names of most plants...anyone who reminds me would get $5 a plant :)

Lets just say Plant 1 for the below as I dont know the name. Back home this used to be considered a weed and no one really pays any attention to it:
Plant 1:

Plant 2: This is a very common household plant which requires very little maintenance; Its also used while performing Pooja/prayers at home.

Plant 3: Its a very delicate plant. Soon after you pluck the flower, they start to whither which makes it a poor choice while offering daily prayers in a Hindu household. This looks fairly similar to "December" flowers which are also in purple color but bloom only in winters.

Plant 4: This looks fairly similar to nooru-varahalu plant and I mistook it to be the same plant until I paid close attention to it. These flowers, unlike nooru-varahaalu is purple in color with fairly thin petals compared to nooru-varahaalu plant. But I do remember seeing this too back home.

Plant 5: I simply cannot believe I forgot the name of this plant! I had grown up seeing this practically every single of my life back home! Even in Bangalore my landlords had this! This is very famous plant and is used for various purposes. I remember, my mom used to make small bouquets from these to be given to all the teachers on Teachers Day when we were in school.

Plant 6 and Plant 7: Lets just call these crotons. I never knew the name of these two plants from back home but these are mainly used as fillers in flower vases, both at home and at professional florists.

Kaagitam Puvvulu (in telugu): Ah ha! Finally a name I remember! These are very famous back home and everyone who has a little space in front or backyard are sure to have these. These are called Kaagitam puvvulu (paper-flowers) as they look like flowers made out of paper.

Mandaara puvvu (in Telugu): There are so many verities of hibiscus back home. This is one of them. This is not a fairly common verity but my mom had it on and off in her garden over the years.

Plant 8 and Mudda-Mandaaram: While I dont remember the name of the small cream colored flowers, the one beside it in yellow color is hibiscus. Mudda-mnadaram; mudda meaning think...mandaram meaning hibiscus.

Mudda-mandaram 2: Same as the yellow flowers above, this is also a hibiscus in red color. A very famous and common household plant which is used in daily prayers.

Plant 9: This plant was also called croton by my mom. I am fairly sure it has a name of its own but we always called it croton when we didnt know the specific name. We never had this plant at home (or did we?). I think I had this in Hyderabad when I was working in Bank of America...

Plant 10: This grows a very big tree unlike all the other plants we have seen so far. I dont know the name of this tree either but its not as common as the other plants out here.

Plant 11: This is one of the fancy plants which is seen usually in places like hotels/ resorts. Looks like a banana flower? little bit?

Croton: This for sure is a croton! We had this in every home we lived in back home.