Funchal flowers and trees
The plant that I found most impressive in Madeira was a Plumeria tree with its abundant clusters of waxy looking pink and yellow flowers. The pink decorated the edges of the petals while the yellow spread from the middle of each flower, leaving the rest of the petals soft white. I guess we were lucky to be there at the right time to witness the vibrancy and freshness of the trees. I’m still enchanted by them and wish they could grow in our garden.
Hydrangeas are undoubtedly my favourite bushes. Every year I buy one or two plants in a pot to decorate our terrace. I also tried to grow them in our garden but without success. Either the young spring leaves were eaten by snails or they were burnt by late spring frost, none of them lasted. Perhaps I am choosing too delicate varieties or simply the open space of our garden is too harsh for them, exposing them both to cold and hot directly. In Madeira, you can see Hydrangeas prospering not only in maintained spaces but also growing by the edges of roads. Wow, it felt unbelievable.
The exotic-looking Strelitzias added a special atmosphere to the city flowerbeds. They are called birds of paradise, and I find that quite fitting as the resemblance to a bird’s head is striking. We can buy Strelitzias as cut flowers, but I can’t imagine displaying them in a vase at home, they always seemed a bit out of place to me.
On my wish list, I almost always have succulents. If anybody wants to buy me anything as a gift and comes with a succulent plant, I am happy about it. I have several pots with them at home but they would never grow into the size seen in Madeira. What an unbeatable difference.
Another great looking flower that we saw not only in Funchal was Agapanthus with its abundance of blue flowers. If I am not mistaken we also saw white variety in some other place but even if so, the blue one was much more common.
Madeira is known for its mild subtropical climate — which was one of the reasons why we chose it as our destination. The climate provides very good conditions for the flowers and trees to prosper and seeing it up close rather than in photographs felt like a gift. It made me realise that I cannot just wish to have the admired plants in the garden if our climate is so different. Even if I could imitate it, it would never feel like real home to me.
