Vacation — Mediterranean flowers

I decided to follow up my Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post with a post about the flowers I saw while I was on my vacation.

It was amazing to get to see in person the incredible variety of flora that thrive in the Mediterranean climate.   While we were travelling, we went to botanical gardens in Funchal, Madeira; Seville, Spain; and Lisbon, Portugal.   Of course, I was attracted to flowers everywhere: in the fields, along the street, and in private gardens as well as the specimins in the more formal gardens.

This is a selection of some of my favorite floral encounters during the two weeks we were immersed in the Mediterranean climate.

The first stop was in Funchal, on the island of Madeira.   They enjoy a subtropical climate, the island is on about the same latitude as San Diego.   The part of the island we were on was the south facing slope, so that made it even more balmy.   They export some 18,000 tons of bananas from Funchal.

In the botanical gardens I learned that there was more than one kind of bird of paradise flower:

There was also this hanging vine, which had no label, that cried out to be photographed.

Of course, there were myriad other flowers there, but none of them really cry out to be included in this post.   After we visited the botanical garden, we went to tea at Reid’s Hotel, the first hotel ever build on the island of Madeira.   It is also arguably the most luxurious.   The owner of Reid’s hotel is also extremely wealthy, and established a lovely botanical garden of his own on the grounds of the hotel.   I was entranced by these little succulents:

 

In addition to his botanical garden around the hotel, the owner of Reid’s also has a wonderful place up on the hill.   There he has a display of trees from around the world.   The most notable of these trees are some olive trees which he rescued from Portugal.   These olive trees were planted during the time of the Roman occupation of Portugal, and are over 2000 years old.   The government of Portugal needed to build a dam for hydroelectric power, and these trees were going to be inundated.   At his own expense, this man had seven of these ancient olive trees transplanted to his estate on Madeira, where you can go and look at them for yourself.   When you look at this photograph, please bear in mind that the pots that are acting as decor for these olive trees are taller than Jim, and he is 6′2″ tall.

It was amazing to stand in the presence of such antiquity.

In Seville, there were little courtyards with ferns and flowers everywhere.   But the things that cried out to be photographed were not these so much as the incredible buildings.   I did catch one bougainvilla vine climbing over a building in the Alcázar Palace, though.

That was not the only bougainvilla that demanded to be photographed.   There was one at Reid’s Hotel:

It wasn’t just the bougainvilla here that cried for documentation.   It was also the wisteria climbing the pillars of the balconies.  There was wisteria everywhere, my favorite vine was the one in Lisbon, which appeared in my teaser post.

When we were on the road, we saw numerous wildflowers.   The images of fields of wildflowers are also in the teaser.  But there were some individuals that managed to make the photographic cut.

This lovely purple blossom posed for me at Doñana National Park.   I don’t know what it is, but there was a lot of it:

In addition to this lovely, there was a whole field of wildflowers nearby:

On our drive into Spain from Portugal, we had to stop to take pictures of the view, and I was captivated by the fact that in addition to there being ancient olive trees planted all over every mountain slope in the area, there was lavender, rosemary and sage growing “like weeds” every where.   I really liked this white flower, with its accompanying beetle covered in pollen:

Outside of Seville when we drove up to Ronda, I captured these cliff dwellers:

I also loved the wildflowers on the coast at Cabo de Sao Vicente:

But by far my favorite flower image of this entire trip is the one that follows.   I took this picture down on the coast of Spain in a little town called Mazagón when we were on our way home from Doñana National Park.   I was caught by the shapes of the walls of the white building, the blue trim, and the incredible magenta of the bougainvilla vine climbing up the wall.   But it wasn’t until I got home that I realized that the sky was so closely matching the blue trim of the house I was photographing.   To me, this image cries out “Spain” and “Mediterranean” like no other.

I want to go back to Spain.

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