Banana Fig

We just call these “figs”, but they are a member of the banana family, and one of my favourite fruits. It’s hard to beat a good fig.

Figs are shorter and fatter than bananas, they are very sweet and can sometimes be a bit sour at the same time - a great combination. The skin is always yellow when they are ripe. I say that because we do have varieties of bananas that are ripe even though the skin is quite green, and will never turn colour other than to go black when they are over ripe.

The skin of a fig tends to be thinner than that of a banana, and you definitely want to wait until they are ripe before eating them. Within a couple of days they will be over ripe, so a “fig fest” might be in order to make sure that you don’t lose any of them - fig trees seem to bear around the same time, so we tend to get a flood of figs and then none for a long time. I used figs to make banana bread once, but they really are too sweet for that - maybe if I had left out the sugar entirely it would have worked.

As with any member of the banana family, the mature trees put out suckers that grow into mature trees that will bear fruit. When a tree has finished bearing it will fall over and die, making room for the young suckers to grow and mature. Technically, you could start with just one or two trees and they would gradually become many trees.

I cannot tell the difference between the various banana tree flowers. It is not until the bunches of fruit appear and start to grow that I can identify the exact variety. The magnificent bunch of figs shown here are just about ready to pick, but alas, they aren’t mine and it is unlikely that I will be able to enjoy any of them. How sad!

Weeds & Wild Bush on Barbados

Like everywhere else in the world, Barbados has it’s fair share of weeds and wild bushes, and I think that they have their own beauty, so I wanted to highlight some of them here. Maybe I’ll do some more at a later date too.

I love the little red thistle-shaped flower of one of those shown here. As a youngster when I kept pet rabbits and guinea pigs, I used to pics these for them - one of their favourite foods. No idea what it’s called though.

The one with the lovely yellow flowers is what I know as Wild Gorse. The flowers are very delicate, but advance with care as there are long thorns hidden amongst the leaves.

The plant with the balls of long thin black seeds are, for me, the real annoyance. If you or your pet brushes past one of these, the animal’s fur and your socks or pants leg will be covered in these seeds. The tips are hooked and they really stick on. They don’t brush or wash off. You just have to painstakingly pick each one off, and if you try to brush or comb them out of your pet’s fur, the animal will be screeching with all the pulling of their fur. Much better to pick them off one by one.

The grasses in the background have razor sharp edges that will give you a nasty cut if you brush past them. They do, however, make great animal feed for horses, cows, sheep and rabbits.

The back of my home looks out on to bushy land as far as you can see - the nearest houses, though not far away, are hidden by trees, the lay of the land and bush. And I like my view - it’s very peaceful and is a hive of activity with birds, insects, lizards, bats,  mongooses and monkeys going about their daily business. It definitely works for me. I don’t look forward to the day when it is developed into housing, as I’m pretty sure that day is coming.

Sea Grape (Coccoloba uvifera)

I absolutely love Sea Grapes - eating the grapes that is. Well, I like the plant too and have several growing in large pots in my garden. As children, a big treat when we went to Crane Beach, was to buy a cone of sea grapes wrapped in a large leaf - the leaves can easily be 10 inches across. That is unless we were allowed to climb up to the top of the sand dunes to pick our own - now that was fun.

I haven’t seen Sea Grapes selling wrapped in a grape leaf for probably thirty or forty years, but you do occasionally see them selling in a small paper bag, but that’s fairly uncommon nowadays too. However, my favourite beach has large sea grape trees growing right on the beach, and we were able to pick some last year to enjoy in the sea. The photos shown here are taken on that beach. Maybe next time we go they will be ripe - unless, of course, they have all been picked by then. The ripe grapes are a delightful purple colour and though small, are juicy and sweet with a relatively large seed.

Sea Grapes grow all around the island, and as the name suggests, do well in salty conditions without much water. The ones I have growing in pots got watered for the first few days when they were young and then never again. They survive the constant wind and the salt with ease. I got my plants as seedlings growing up under mature trees and they transplanted without difficulty into pots.

Sea Grape is one of those unusual plants where male and female flowers grow on separate plants, so for pollination to occur, a male and a female tree must be in close enough proximity to each other that fertilization can occur. This takes places with the help of bees and other nectar feeding insects.

Ixora

I remember seeing a lot of the common red Ixora shrubs as a child, and then again nowadays, but there seemed to be a time in between where people didn’t use them so much.

A red ball made up of tiny red flowers is quite striking in any location. But Ixora is not only red, there’s also a salmon coloured one, pale yellow and pink. The bright red is the one that is seen most frequently - it’s the easiest to grow, but generally speaking, Ixora takes a bit more care, especially to get a young plant going. It’s not something that I personally have had much success with, though my aunt gets them to flourish in the blink of an eye - she has a very green thumb, and they are attacked by blight.

Each brightly coloured ball is made up of many many tiny flowers, and a cut ball looks lovely in a small bowl of water and will stay fresh for a few days.

Ixora is found throughout the Caribbean, not just in Barbados, and is sometimes known as West Indian Jasmine. The flowers have no special fragrance, the leaves are a regular “leaf” shape, and the red flowers are an important component of Hindu worship.

Sugar Apple (Annona squamosa)

I have grown up my entire life eating sugar apples, and my parents used to have a tree in their yard, which, alas, is no more. I can’t remember if it died or was removed to make room for another fruit tree.

Sugar apple, as the name implies is a very sweet fruit that is made up of many white segments, each of which contains a large smooth black seed. The leaves are dark green and feel like sandpaper.

Looking at the images here, each of those bumps on the skin corresponds to a fleshy segment that makes good eating. The skin is thick, rough and grainy, but the ripe fruit just pulls apart, and you can eat the segments straight from the broken fruit or scoop them out with a spoon. It’s not something that you want to be eating in a hurry either.

I haven’t had a sugar apple for a while - it’s not something that you see selling in the supermarket, and I no longer know anyone with a tree - that boils down to no sugar apples for me.

Unfortunately, sugar apple is attacked by various blights and ants - maybe that’s why there aren’t as many of these trees around any more. I don’t know, but what I do know, is that if I’m offered sugar apples, I will gratefully accept and enjoy.

Tropical Green Lizard

I think that the common green lizards that are found in abundance on Barbados are delightful ... except for the poop that they seem to produce far too frequently. It could be worse - they could be iguana-sized and produce even more poop. I think of these lizards as my friends, they are just too cute not too, but then maybe I’m a bit nutty.

However, I think they are very pretty, and I love how they will cock their head to listen if you whistle quietly to them. And just to watch them as they busy themselves protecting their territory and hunting for food.

After a shower of rain, the lizards will come out to drink from water that may have collected on a leaf or have settled on the ground. The tongue seems to function like a straw - it doesn’t flick in and out, it just sits there in the water.

Male lizards protect their territory with vicious fights where the loser limps away (literally) bruised and battered. At first they face off with bright yellow throats extended. If that does not result in one backing down, then the fight begins and they wrestle and tumble with bodies entwined together and jaws locked until one surrenders.

A moulting lizard is not very pretty as shown in one of the images here, but it is interesting, and the old skin is shed sometimes in pieces and sometimes as a more complete skin. The nearly black colour of the one pictured here means that it is either stressed or old, or both. If it is just stressed, the beautiful green colour will return after a period of time.

And a lizard egg is the cutest thing, usually hidden under a stone or in a plant pot. It is soft shelled, much like a turtle egg, but shaped more like a chicken egg. I have not been lucky enough to witness a hatching, but I live in hope.

Hibiscus

Hibiscus is found all over the world in tropical climes, and Barbados is no exception. As a child, only the common red one was found in Barbados, and it was everywhere. Hedges and shrubs were in every garden - lines of green littered with bright red flowers. and I loved it as I used to eat the flowers - I still find them quite delicious. Only the common red ones though - the hybrids that come in almost every colour of the rainbow are much coarser and don’t have much flavour. Right off the bush, Hibiscus makes for a tasty snack. Hibiscus is in the same family as okra, which I like equally as much.

The common red Hibiscus is very easy to propagate. Get some cuttings from a mature plant, strip off the leaves and place in water until roots appear, then plant out. The hybrids can be done in this way too, they are just harder to get to root and then flourish in the ground, but once you’ve got them past that delicate stage, they are quite hardy, and a bit of water during the drier months will be appreciated.

Hibiscus leaves have serrated edges and are either a nice rich green or variegated as shown in one of the photos. I am only aware of the variegated variety having a red flower. Notice also that the unopened flower bud in the common red Hibiscus is quite different from that of the hybrid red. The common red buds are also very delicious.

Unfortunately, slugs and snails also find Hibiscus quite delicious, and they can clean the plant of leaves in just a couple of nights. I remember going slug hunting on many nights with my dad with bucket of brine in hand, and it really did make a difference. Nowadays, people buy some awful chemical like malathion to do the job instead of a cheap and effective brine solution that you can make in your kitchen. I guess that is what is called “progress”.

Silver Dollar

It seems like there are lots of plants called “Silver Dollar” and this is our version here in Barbados. I love the grey-green leaves that can show off a contrastingly coloured shrub beautifully, as is shown in one of the images below - Silver Dollar with purple allamanda at the back.

Silver Dollar tolerates dry salty conditions well, so people who live near the sea tend to use it generously in their gardens. Funnily enough, I had one for a few years growing in a very large pot that looked great until it got infected with two kinds of blight. Try as hard as I might, I just couldn’t get that shrub to come back, and eventually got rid of it.

The leaves are almost velvety to the touch, and the plant puts out minuscule little flowers and ball bearing sized seeds, that are green at first (almost the same colour as the leaves), but then dry out to become brown balls that drop off onto the surrounding area.

I don’t know anything about propagating these plants, as I have only got mine as established seedlings. Silver Dollar shrubs can be trimmed to form a hedge, and they can be allowed to grow into small trees with hard woody bark.

I like Silver Dollar and I think it’s a wonderful contrasting colour against the usual darker greens found in the garden. It can be incorporated into most styles of landscaping.

Euphorbia

Though this plant looks like a cactus complete with spines, it is actually a succulent that is very easy to grow - just break off a piece at a suitable spot and plant in a pot or in the ground. Water occasionally until it has caught and voila, you have a nice healthy plant that will grow into the size of a small tree if allowed.

The one shown here is growing in a pot in my front yard, and it obviously likes the location as it flowers regularly, and I have had to cut it back several times over the past few years. The sap of Euphorbia is milky and yes, this too will blister your skin if not washed off properly.

The flowers are little red pyramid-shaped flowers that eventually dry up and burst open to release the spores into the wind - I regularly pull up seedlings as I do my weekly weeding. When the flower buds first emerge they are a very pale yellow-green colour that turn red as they mature.

The plant will be absolutely covered in flowers that are very attractive to bees and flies, and you can hear the buzzing from quite a distance as they feed on the nectar, mostly in the early morning.

Oleander (Nerium)

Most people are familiar with Oleander and associate this shrub with tropical climes - not just the Caribbean as I know that I’ve seen it all around the Mediterranean too.

Oleander has a long slender leaf with an equally long and slender seed pod that is easy to miss as it is so similar in size and shape to the leaves. However, the seed pod does eventually dry up and burst open to release the feathered seeds into the breeze for distribution.

Oleander is one of the milk plants where not only is the milk poisonous, but it will also blister your skin if it is not washed off thoroughly and quickly.

Oleander flowers come in a variety of colours, from white through pale pink (very common) to a stronger pink and a dark pinky-red colour. And not only are the colours striking, but the flowers also come in doubles, one of which is pictured in this post.

Propagation of Oleander is easy using cuttings - it’s best to put them straight into soil without any leaves  and then water regularly. It won’t be long before the new leaves start to appear on the bare stalk.

Oleander is not good in flower arrangements of any kind - they just help to make your garden look bright and lovely.