Riot Of Red

You can feel it from the recent erratic behaviour of the weather. The season is changing. To cope with this transformation, many plants in our parks have started shedding their leaves.

Park visitors will notice a few ornamental trees from Asia and Africa having very flashy fountains or pagoda-like and bell, funnel, boat or kidney-shaped large red flowers.

One of these is the Coral tree or Erythrina ovalifolia. It drops all its leaves and branches, and becomes well-shaven. A few trees are in Safa and Creek Side Parks.

The flowers of a coral tree are a brilliant coral-red or vermillion and these cover the whole tree. Coral flowers are boat-shaped, 10-12cm long and grow in clusters, a dozen or so spreading out from a common base but all opening skyward.

Petals are large and red while sepals are greenish. The fruit is a long pod, chocolate in colour. At the base of each flower there is an accumulation of nectar. This attracts not only creepy crawly animals but also larger ones like sunbirds, mynahs, parakeets, crows, squirrels and bats.

Most of these animals just drink the nectar without destroying the flowers. But parakeets pick up one flower at a time and drink nectar from the base before dropping the flower.

However, the parakeets do not spend a lot of time on one tree.

If you are an early visitor to these parks you may even see parakeets in action.