Wednesday 4 February 2015

Bleeding heart vine

I'd like to share something that's making me smile.

For Christmas, my 'almost family' gave me a bleeding heart vine.  I'd never seen one before - turns out it's native to West Africa but can grow here as a house plant.

When it arrived, it was covered with red and white flowers, like this:

I never took a photo - image from here  


Dramatic and lovely.

When we returned from holiday, all the flowers had died.  I trimmed most of them off (hoping to encourage more), but left a few by mistake.

I noticed the other day that this had happened:


As I was trimming off the dead flowers, I'd noticed a green 'knob' in the base of some of them.  In the flowers I'd left on the plant these had burst open, revealing a shiny black seed coated with orangey-red powder.  Two of the remaining flowers have these and I think they're stunning!

It also has deeply veined leaves that look beautiful with the light behind them.


All round a delightful plant :-)

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