Sometimes serendipity is the best way to see great things in nature. Driving into this fine County Park to drop off Jeanne to her Pastel Class, it was impossible to overlook these trees. With a marine layer (fog!) affecting the coastline (it was sunny only 1/2 mile away) the colors were also very saturated, rather than the reflected colors seen on a bright day.
The trees - Erythrina coralloides or Naked Coral Tree - were planted years ago to separate a parking lot from the street. And wow. What a good decision. As I was driving out of the park, slowly now through the parking lot, I realized that their was ANOTHER color in the red flowers - Hooded Orioles. In these photos, they are all mature males, dressed up in bright yellow/orange and their best black.
The Hooded Orioles feed on the nectar produced by the flowers. I did not observe long enough to learn if they might be a good pollinator, as this is known as a 'humming bird tree'.
You can now see more clearly (now that those distracting bits of yellow are not in the photo) how this erythrina obtained the 'naked' part of its common name - blooming with NO leaves!
In confirming my identification of the tree, I found an informative link on one of my most favorite 'plant links' - the UBC Botanical Garden in Vancouver, BC Canada. There is more information about the Hooded Oriole at the Cornell website for birds.
2 comments:
Hi Mike,
Stunning pics. I have this tree in my garden. I also see orioles feeding there but have not been lucky (or patient) enough to land a shot. Thanks for posting this.
Cecilia
Post a Comment