autumn flowers #3

When I posted Autumn Flowers last month, I had no expectation that I would continue to find many new examples as I walked along the various paths in my neighbourhood. However, I think I know why so many plants are flowering at a time of year when nature is shutting down for the winter in more temperate climates. Flowering is induced by the photoperiod—the length of daylight—and because it is still very warm here (30 degrees yesterday), the vegetation doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘dormant’.

Anyway, here is the latest collection:

This is the only example I’ve come across of these spindly red flowers, on the path that I follow when walking into Fanling:

…apart from this singular example from another location, which provides a good close-up:

The flowers in the next photo are over-exposed, because as I pointed out in an earlier collection, my camera exposes the image based on the darker background of the leaves:

The yellow flowers in the next photo are only 4–5mm in diameter and would be easy to miss if you weren’t actually looking for them:

There is also a single tiny blue flower in the photo, which I haven’t seen anywhere else.

I’ve often seen people picking the blue flowers in the next photo, so I assume that they have some function in traditional Chinese herbal medicine:

The next photo is of Hong Kong’s ‘national’ flower, bauhinia. As you can probably see, it’s a tree flower, and these trees are planted widely throughout the territory:

The next photo shows another flower that isn’t particularly common. The pinnate leaves at the top of the photo are of a very small tree that grows along river banks and produces large numbers of seed pods, although I’ve never seen the flowers:

I featured a photo of the yellow flowers in the next photo in Autumn Flowers, but I’ve included this image in this collection to show just how impressive they look en masse:

The next photo shows what I refer to as ‘red pom-poms’. This plant has been used as a hedge between our local river and the Drainage Services access road that runs alongside the river:

And here are three close-ups to show how attractive, and unusual, these flowers are:

You will notice that the flower buds are also unusual.

These hedges are usually strimmed regularly, but presumably because of the coronavirus pandemic, strimming operations have been curtailed, and as a result, a flower that I’d never seen before has made an appearance underneath the pom-pom hedge:

I spotted this flower on the opposite side of the access road, where it has presumably also escaped the strimmer:

And a small tree with attractive purple flowers has been widely planted alongside the access road:

Finally, I spotted this vine growing on a wire fence alongside the path from our village to Fanling:

The flowers are actually pink!

more autumn flowers
Autumn Flowers
Autumn Flowers #2
Autumn Flowers #4