This flower was still in bloom when this post was put up.
This seems to be a period where seasonal things assert themselves, and this time the highlight falls on the flowers.
It was close to midnight when we got the scent of a sweet perfume on the air, and Curious Mama immediately sat up and proclaimed that a Keng Hwa flower had bloomed. She was right, of course; she is the Keng Hwa Queen of this household, after all!
We’ve been aware of several flower buds forming over the last week or so, but they don’t all develop at the same rate. No thanks to that, we’ve missed three blooms already. One, in fact, didn’t release the usual perfume that alerts us.
Tonight, however, we got the signal in time and were able to admire the flower. It’s beautiful, isn’t it? 8)
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From the Mother Weed: What a beauty. My parents had a bank of keng hwas against a wall in their previous house in Australia. Perhaps a dozen plants in all? They all (yes, ALL) bloomed the night of the day I got married. The Uncle Weed proclaimed they were blooming in celebration at the thought of getting rid of me.
That must have been amazing, MW! Great symbolism, lovely perfume and general beautiful sight. We get thrilled when we have multiple flowers on our two plants, so I can imagine what a whole bank of them must have been like. Curious Mama will probably want to see photos, if you have any.
Wait for the fruit! Tastes like dragon fruit, only better; sweet and EXTREMELY fragrant. Well, that’s how my plant is. Presently, tons of buds …
Our plants don’t always set fruits, and they’re tiny little things (the fruits)! I think we’ve seen only 3 or 4 fruits, ever. We tried growing new plants from the seeds inside, and managed to grow a couple of little ones, but then they didn’t live long. Sounds like you’ve got some nice, established plants over there, Miki!
Help me understand – u propagate your keng hwa from seeds? For me, I just clip of a leave, stick in the dirt, and Voila! I get a new plant. And, btw, the fruits are not large like dragon fruit, smaller than a peach but not so small that makes handling difficult. The inside looks exactly like the dragon fruit. It probably would yield larger fruits if it were planted in the ground; mine’s in a pot.
I hv the “real” dragon fruit plant in pink, white, and red (so the labels read when I bought them). They hv done nothing so far by way of fruits except growing crazy in all kinds of directions. Not so easy to handle cuz the leaves/stalks are thorny.
Later,
Miki, the fruits that our keng hwa plants produce are only about an inch long, and since they’re new to us – keng hwa plants are known here as ornamental plants, with fruits being rare occurrences – we have left the fruits on the plants to see what happened. The second one dried on the plant before it fell off during the rainy season, and when we recovered it, we found that the seeds inside had started germinating. They didn’t survive. The third fruit that formed was more carefully observed and taken care of, and we managed to grow two plants from the seeds. And yes, we have propagated from leaf cuttings too, but growing from seeds was more interesting!
I realize you have to be really patient with some fruiting plants. Sometimes they take forever to start producing!
Talk abt “forever to produce”! I digress. Hv this papaya that’s been on the tree for close to a year. It’s hanging there, not too big, and green, green, green. Frustrating! So also my Fuji apple and a couple of tangerine trees, doing not much. Researched and one suggestion was to whack the trunks with a 2 by 4. to “wake up” these sleeping ingrates. Well, whether it worked or not there’s no telling as the results were not immediate. However, a few months later, trees showed signs of potential fruits – buds! Perhaps it was time or the 2 by 4 trick worked, who knows? Since the keng hwa has no trunk you can’t whack it – the leaves wd break into a million pieces,
LOL! No, I wouldn’t dream of attacking my mother’s Keng Hwa plants!
It’s true about “scaring” fruit trees by threatening them. Over here, they may use a machete to slash the bark of the tree. I had some unexpected limited success with a mango tree that had been barren for quite a while – I was actually chopping it down a bit at a time each weekend, and it suddenly started budding! No fruits though. Almost a year for a papaya must be some kind of record! Hope it starts ripening for you soon.