San Francisco Citizen

This is the scene these days at the San Francisco Botanical Gardens (aka Strybing Arboretum). Can you see? It’s Passiflora parritae, the rarest passion flower in the world.

You can spot these vivid orange buds hanging off a Clethra suaveolenstree just south of the Chile area of Strybing.   

Click to expand:

A closer view:

This is the only animal that can pollinate this particular flower – Ensifera ensifera,the sword-billed hummingbird. But you won’t see this South American bird at Strybing.

via kookr’s photostream

Passiflora parritae might not be long for the world. You should try to notice it the next time you visit Golden Gate Park.

Tags: arboretum, botanical gardens, columbia, Ensifera ensifera, golden gate park, Hummingbird, orange, parritae, Passiflora, passion flower, passionflower, San Francisco, strybing, sword-billed

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 7:50 pm and is filed under parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.