Technicolor Adaptation, by Lea Ann Robson

Aptly named Flambouyant

As a kid I vacationed with my folks on Sanibel Island, & I recall being completely enthralled with the improbable-looking flora there.  The plants had almost surreal adaptations designed to retain water in drought & salt conditions.  Then there were the sea grapes with their lilly pad-like leaves, purple to crimson veining & shiny chartreuse new leaf faces.  I marveled at how the red blooms on the crown of thorns formed perfect rows within a tidy grid.  They didn’t look real, not in the random way nature looked in West Virginia.

Mary Robson's (my Mom) pic of frangipani

Colors & shapes were bolder & flashier, too.  Spring in West Virginia & Maryland is a game of hide-&-seek, with spring beauties, trillium & may-apple, daffodils & crocus all getting their start under piles of winter compost, peeking out slowly lest they get stopped in their tracks by a late frost.  Tropical plants are fearless by comparison.  They have big bold leaves, incredibly saturated hues, & they seem unapologetically flamboyant.  We even have gorgeous red-orange blooming trees called Flambouyants (or Royal Poinciana, if you really like over-the-top).  There are other exotic names—Frangipani, bougainvillea, bird of paradise, jasmine, monsterra.  Tulip & Violet can hardly compete.  (Not to dis violets.  I still remember the joy of finding a carpet of them, & looking for the white ones in all that velvety purple.)

Thunbergia vining through bromeliads

When I look at my little house on Google Earth (two-dimensionally because no one has taken street views here yet) I can pick it out immediately by the magenta hedge of bougainvillea lining the front of my porch.  So bright you can almost literally see it from space!  I just painted the porch railing behind it a color between celadon & Tiffany blue (very close to capturing the color of the sea off our Frederiksted beaches), & the effect of the bougainvillea in front of that is arresting.  I have huge mounds of periwinkle blue thunbergia against my creamy Danish yellow house & despite friends’ warnings that I have to keep the aggressive vine in check or risk being housebound as it furls around my doors, I love it as it is (& I have a machete in case I get trapped inside).    

In the morning, I pass a house recently painted key lime with white trim.  It is a modest house within an area of similar houses, but that green has distinguished it & made it fresh & inviting.  I can’t imagine that color or the colors of my house in Maryland or West Virginia.  They are an adaptation to the tropics, like those bulges & bumps full of water on our tropical foliage.