Error message
Unable to fetch location details at this time.
peacock flower
Caesalpinia pulcherrima
-2.5631, 140.504
Field Notes
Description:
The peacock flower is a species of flowering plant in the pea family, Fabaceae, that is native to the tropics and subtropics of the Americas. Its exact origin is unknown due to widespread cultivation. C. pulcherrima is the most widely cultivated species in the genus Caesalpinia. It is a striking ornamental plant, widely grown in domestic and public gardens and has a beautiful inflorescence in yellow, red and/or orange. In the Neotropics it attracts hummingbirds, and in New Guinea, their counterpart, sunbirds (Nectariniidae), as well as butterflies. Red form is featured in this spotting.
Habitat:
Growing as an ornamental in a large semi-urban garden in the equatorial tropics of northern New Guinea.
Notes:
In a moving passage in her magnificent 1705 Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647—1717) recorded how the Indian and African slave populations in Surinam, then a Dutch colony, used the seeds of a plant she identified as the flos pavonis, literally “peacock flower”, as an abortifacient. Read more here http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2808%296…
Comments (1)