Nagamalli Flower

[Sudhakar Redddy]

We call this Nagamalli because it resembles Lord Shiva's symbol Linga, with a serpent's hood over it. Gives out nice fragrance as well. To those of u who are not conversent with the Hindu pantheon, it may all sound as very unfamiliar jargon.




The flowering occurs only from the trunk.

[Skippy]

Overall the tree itself is rather bland, but get up close and those flowers are gorgeous.

[Sage]

The flowers remind me of what we call "Passion Flower". # 1 is my pick. ~~Peg

[yellalablady]

I was going to say the same thing about the Passion Flower. I like #2 because it shows the unusual growth habit of the flower.

[Baron von Smoogle]

#1 is a really nice shot. I like the texture in the petals.

[hunter58]

I like #1 best too. The exposure is very pleasing. Very pretty flower.

[Sudhakar Redddy]

The flower in my Avtar was identified as the Passion flower when I posted in these forums earlier.

And where as the present one is a tree, the other one is a creeper and the morphology of the leaves is also entirely different.

May be it's a different species of the Passion Flower - I know there are several.

Thanks everybody for having a look & commenting.

[Kiasmum]

Gosh,they're unusual Sudhakar,and very beautiful. Thank you for sharing the 'bigger picture' Number 3 would be my choice-the extra light really shows it to its best advantage.

[Sudhakar Redddy]

Thanks Karin.

Very happy u like it.

[Jeffrey Govender]

Hi Sudhakar,

Just did a google search and found the wikipedia listing. This flower sure a very beautiful specimen.

"Cannonball Tree, is an evergreen tree allied to the Brazil Nut, and is native to tropical northern South America and to the southern Caribbean. In India it has been growing for the past two or three thousand years at least, as attested by textual records[citation needed]; hence it is possible that it is native to India also. It's part of the family Lecythidaceae and grows up to 25m (82ft) in height.

[Sudhakar Redddy]

Thanks Jeffrey.

I have gone through that Wiki article after seeing your post above. It contains lot of info.

Folklore has it that serpants visit these trees attracted by the fragrance of these flowers. So, people are rather afraid to go near these trees.