Christmas Candle (Senna alata)

It is that time of year when this wonderful shrub is covered in magnificent candle-like golden flowers, Christmas Candle (Senna alata). When these start to flower, you know that Christmas is just around the corner, the days are shorter and the nights are cooler.

Many people have this shrub in their gardens, but they can also be seen growing wild, particularly in the eastern and northern parts of the island. It seems to be quite a hardy plant as it survives irrespective of the weather in preceeding months - the flowers will always appear at the end of the year.

The leaves are quite thick and feel like they have a very fine covering of hairs. At other times of the year, Christmas Candle will just blend in with surrounding greenery. It really is when the flowers come out that it stands out in a class of it’s own, and to me it really does mean that the  Christmas season has arrived.

Column Cactus

I have no idea what kind of column cactus is shown here, but I found a piece growing wild, carefully removed it and put it in a pot on my deck, where it has been for the past three or so years.

When I first got the plant, it was about eighteen inches tall, but obviously loved it’s location. Within a matter of months, it was about five feet tall. It seems to have slowed down at it’s present height of about eight feet and puts out the most magnificent flowers.

There is usually just one flower at a time, but there may be two or three a few days apart. The bud grows over a period of a week or so and each flower opens in the late afternoon around dusk, and the actual opening is quite quick, maybe over an hour. It will stay open like this all night, close up a little the next day, re-open the next night and then close completely the following morning. The photos here were all taken in the early morning, and I had to get the ladder out to get some of them.

I know that the hummingbirds feed on the flowers as I have watched them come in for a feed after the sun has set but before it is pitch dark, and they will go and come several times during the course of the evening. I’m sure larger moths probably enjoy the nectar too, but I haven’t actually seen this. After the flower has closed, it will dry up and drop off after a few days.

Seaside Morning Glory (Ipomoea pes-caprae)

I love Seaside Morning Glory for many reasons. Aside from the fact that it grows (thrives) on little to no soil (rock is just fine), and it does shrink back and die off during the dry season, but the minute rain comes along, oh my, the ground is transformed with a magnificent green carpet (it grows really quickly) interspersed with these lovely purple flowers. What can be better than that?!

Seaside Morning Glory grows on the beach as well as along cliff edges on the coastline, so salt and wind are no problem for this hardy plant. Anywhere from the south-east coast of Barbados, along the east coast and right up to the north of the island, you will see this growing. It is even used on beaches that have suffered erosion to help “hold” the sand.

To top it off, butterflies of all sizes and colours love Seaside Morning Glory. What’s not to like!

Silver Dollar

This shrub grows very easily and can be seen in gardens all over Barbados. I don’t know the Latin name for Silver Dollar (that’s what we call it), but it has a lovely grey-green leaf, very similar to that of Texas Sage, but much bigger, and it bears bunches of tiny little spherical pods, some of which are clearly shown in the photo.

Silver Dollar makes a great hedge or a stand alone ornamental shrub. It handles dry conditions well, requiring just a bit of watering to get it through the dry season. It also thrives along the windswept south and east coasts of Barbados, and can be found growing steps from the beach.

If left to run wild, Silver Dollar will become a more tree-sized plant, providing good shelter from the sun and wind.

Sea Grape (Coccoloba uvifera)

Sea Grape trees and shrubs grow wild all over Barbados, particularly along the coastline. They are easily recognisable because of the almost circular leaf. As the new leaves come out, they are a magnificent rust colour, as shown in one of the photographs, and as they age they change to a verdant green.

As the name implies, sea grapes bear a small delicious fruit, which turns purple as it ripens. The hard part is finding ripe ones to pick as birds, monkeys and other people all like them too. When I was a child, people would sell them on the beach for a few pennies - the leaf was twisted into a cone shape and filled with lushious ripe fruit. Failing that, we would climb the sand dunes to reach the trees ourselves and feast.

Sea Grape is a very hardy salt tolerant plant, most of the leaves will fall off during the dry season, and they will look quite bare and near death, but as soon as rain comes, these magnificent rusty coloured leaves appear which slowly turn green, and it becomes thick and lush, and quite spectacular.

Keep your eyes open as you explore the island’s beaches and coastline, and you are sure to come across some Sea Grape trees.

Texas Sage (Leucophyllum frutescens)

Texas Sage is not indigenous to Barbados, but it can be found thriving in gardens all over the island, and I could not resist including it here. Just one look at the photo will tell you why.

Texas Sage is a shrub with a tiny leaf that is more grey than green. It prefers somewhere that is sheltered from the wind, but gets good sunlight and rain. The one pictured here is in a garden that experiences high wind for most of the year, but the shrub itself is tucked behind a structure, so from mid-morning until late afternoon it is in the sun, it gets runoff from the roof when there is rain and is exposed to little wind. And it is just magnificent when covered in flowers, which usually appear after there has been some rain, seemingly overnight.

In the dry season, it does not need to be watered very often, just a little to keep going, but as soon as rain comes, it transforms to this magnificent purple and grey ball of colour that the bees and butterflies love. You cannot help but smile and feel better when face with a flowering Texas Sage.

Coconut (Cocos nucifera)

Everybody knows what a coconut tree looks like as we see them on TV all the time, but not everyone has seen one as it starts out in life. The first photo shown here is of a coconut that has fallen onto the ground, dried out over a period of months and is now sprouting to become a coconut tree. Being that the coconut can float, it can travel great distances on the water before coming to rest on dry land and then sprouting to become a new tree. Nature is pretty amazing, isn’t it.

The second photo shows a bunch of coconuts still on the tree, some of which are ready to be picked. As you can see, not all “water coconuts” (as we call them when they are ready) are green in colour as these yellow/golden varieties are also quite common on the island. At this stage, the coconut contains coconut water and usually some coconut jelly, though the amount varies significantly from tree to tree. So after the water has been drained out of the nut, it can be cut open and the jelly scooped out for consumption straight from the nut. Depending on the ripeness of the coconut, the jelly can vary from very soft to relatively firm, and it tends to have quite a strong coconut flavour. Coconut that has been grated and used in cooking comes from a coconut that has dried sufficiently that the outer shell is completely brown, and most of the water has been absorbed to become dry coconut suitable for grating.

The third photo is self explanatory - a lovely coconut tree framing part of the south coast of Barbados at sunrise. So really coconuts are pleasing on the eye and the palate. Enjoy!

Butterflies Everywhere

This year again we have had a multitude of wonderful butterflies of all colours and sizes. This is just one of the many shown in these photos. I was lucky enough to snap this as it settled on a Silver Dollar bush in the east of the island, but there were so many others that I was just not quick enough to get.

Some are just tiny, with a wing span of about 5/8” with pale yellow wings or pale lavendar wings and even darker brown wings. They seemed to come out of the ground cover in clouds as I walked through various “weeds”. 

We’ve also had lots of the slightly larger almost white butterflies, pale yellow, a magnificent buttery yellow and even golden yellow, but these seem to be slightly less abundant. I have a white sage plant in a pot on my deck where I can sit and watch them come and go as they feed on the nectar of these flowers. I’ve also seen them in abundance on yellow sage, pink sage and just about any colour sage shrub.

My garlic chive that is flowering profusely also seems to be very appealing to some of the butterflies, particularly the ones shown here. If you really want to see our local butterflies, you will need to take a drive past areas that are not quite as developed and built up and therefore with more “bush” and uncultivated spaces.

Creeping Jenny

Most people think of Creeping Jenny as a weed and work assiduously to remove all signs of it from their garden, however, it is perfect for areas where there is little or no soil, and it is hardy enough to grow in more windswept and salty conditions.

The flowers are actually quite small, about five eighths of an inch in diameter, but a carpet of bright yellow flowers and verdant green leaves is quite spectacular. It can’t be seen in these photos, but Creeping Jenny will even grow over solid rock where there are only tiny little pockets of soil, and it thrives.

Being so hardy, it requires no care at all other than, perhaps, to cut it back a bit if it spreads too far. In the dry season, it thins out, but as soon as the rains come, it spreads and flowers and is really quite delightful. An added bonus is that it is particularly attractive to a variety of butterflies and bees too.

Creeping Jenny can be found growing in abundance on and near the cliffs of the east and northern parts of the island.