Blood Lily (Scadoxus multiflorus)

Public Domain Photo: A visitor photographs a blood lily (Scadoxus multiflorus) at the Fairchild Tropical Garden, located in the south of Miami on an 83-acre site between historic Old Cutler Road and Biscayne Bay. The Garden is internationally renowned for its collections of palms, cycads, and other tropical plants, including many rare and endangered species of plants.

Blood Lily (Scadoxus multiflorus) is also known by names such as Football Lily, Powderpuff Lily, Poison Root, Fireball Lily, etc. The Scadoxus, having close affinities with Haemanthus from which it has been separated only recently, is a genus of 9 species native to tropical Africa. As a garden plant, or indoor plant, it is cultivated in many parts of the world, notably in North America, Europe and some parts of Asia. The plant can live in the most neglected conditions, with the least care. The ideal climate is tropical, and it may not withstand extreme cold conditions. Mostly one bulb produces a solitary bunch of flowers consisting of up to 200 individual flowers in a season, or annually. The size of the flower can be as big as a football, and it is interesting to watch as a stalk may come up from a dormant bulb from below the ground and produce a bunch of flowers, and a few leaves may grow up, mostly after the flowers wither away.

More public domain photos of Blood Lily flowers and a plant with a bud and leaves are below.

Lemon fruit and lemon flowers

Public Domain photos: (1) Lemon fruit, (2) lemon flowers

Lemon is a small evergreen tree (Citrus × limon, shortened as C. limon), commonly believed to have first grown in India, northern Burma and China. The fruit, also called lemon, is used for culinary and nonculinary purposes throughout the world, mainly in cooking and baking. Lemon juice has about 5% to 6% citric acid.

There are several varieties of lemons such as: Bush Lemon (naturalized lemon grown wild in subtropical Australia), Eureka Lemon (a year-round common supermarket lemon), Lisbon (bitter lemon, the fruits are similar to Eureka), Meyer (a cross between a lemon and possibly an orange or a mandarin, thin-skinned and slightly less acidic than the Lisbon and Eureka lemons), Ponderosa (thick skinned, very large fruit), variegated Pink, Verna (a Spanish variety), Villafranca, Yen Ben (Australasian cultivar), and Yuzu.

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Hymenocallis, Spider Lily Flower

PD Photo: A Hymenocallis flower showing six spokes, as pattern for the three-lobed design of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE.

Hymenocallis, a bulbous perennial herb, is a genus of plants in the family Amaryllidaceae, having 63 species native to tropical and subtropical America. The plants have large spectacular flowers, and some of the species are known as varieties of Spider Lilies.

Corpse Flower in Wilhelma Botanical and Zoological Gardens Stuttgart

Photo: Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum) in Wilhelma Botanical and Zoological Gardens Stuttgart, Germany - photo dated October 20, 2005 by Lothar Grünz.

The interesting news of thousands of residents of Tokyo queuing up to view a rare flower known as the Corpse Flower, also known as Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), came after such flowerings of the plants cultivated in botanical gardens in Berkeley and Houston, USA. The rare flower of the plant drew in thousands of visitors because it bloomed after about 20 years.

The Corpse Flower emits the stench of rotten dead bodies (and hence the name) but it is quite gorgeous to look at. It is the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. The distinction of the largest single flower goes to Rafflesia arnoldii, and largest branched inflorescence in the plant kingdom belongs to the Talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera).

Both Titan arum and Rafflesia arnoldii are natives of Indonesia, mainly found in the tropical rain forests of Sumatra, and both share the common name Corpse Flower (bunga bangkai in Indonesian - bunga means flower and bangkai means corpse or cadaver). Flowers of the category Carrion flowers or stinking flowers generally emit an odor that smells like rotting flesh to attract mostly scavenging flies and beetles as pollinators.

Many plants in the genus Amorphophallus are carrion flowers. Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) presents an inflorescence or compound flower composed of a spadix or stalk of small and anatomically reduced male and female flowers, surrounded by a spathe that resembles a single giant petal.