Sunday, January 6, 2013

Flower Photos: Odontonema strictum or Firespike


Here's another flower that brightens up the cold winter days on Okinawa.

Like Poinsettia plants, they fire-up the hills with red color, even if the sun doesn't shine.

People gave them all kinds of common names.  

Mexican Firespike, Firespike, Scarlet Flame and Cardinal Guard are a few that I found.

Scientists call them Odontonema strictum.  They aren't regular people, you know.

They would probably kick my butt in a game of Scrabble, I bet.


Science Helps Me Sometimes

 

 

It might have taken all week to get the correct identification of this plant.

Whenever there's a sign like this, alongside a flower I'm shooting, I photograph it, too.

Then, just put Odonto Nema in a search engine and see what pops up.

Those scientific names are used around the world.

They really make it easy to correctly ID wildlife, plants and probably diseases.

So, I guess I shouldn't poke fun at those scientist guys, too much.

They are a lot smarter than me.

But, I think I could beat most of them at chugging alphabet soup.  Hah !



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