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The hibiscus is a common shrub in
Southern California
gardens. The wild type has red flowers, which are single, that
is, only one row of five petals. Notice the long tube of stamens
around the pistil. Cultivated forms come in other colors as well
as red.
We cloned several bushes of double
pink hibiscus in our
yard, and let them grow quite large. One reason was that they
were a favored food for the desert
turtles. They liked the
leaves, but even more so, the flowers. Some years the resident
mockingbirds
nested in the hibiscus just outside a window, where we
could observe them. One time ground doves
refurbished the
mockingbirds nest.
This shows the double hibiscus
flower. Some of the
stamens have been replaced by extra petals. And some stamens have
flattened out to be partly petals. The giant whitefly
invasion of
the 1990's hit our hibiscus so hard, I had to cut them down.
Fortunately the turtles had already gone to new homes.
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