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SINGAPORE \u2013 A rare and striking plant, kept for more than 25 years as part of the Singapore Botanic Gardens\u2019 living collections, has flowered for the first time.<\/p>\n
The Costus<\/i> fenestralis<\/i> is a member of the spiral ginger family often known as Costus \u201cBlue Hawaii\u201d, the Singapore Botanic Gardens said in a post on Facebook on July 14.<\/p>\n
The plant is recognisable by its unusual leafy shoots, with leaves crowded at the top of the stem and spreading out in a circular, umbrella-like arrangement.<\/p>\n
Its large, tubular flowers feature different shades of pink with a bright yellow patch on the labellum, a modified petal that often serves as a landing platform for pollinators, suggesting that it is most likely pollinated by bees, said the Botanic Gardens.<\/p>\n
The yellow stamen ends in a delicate pink crest, shaped almost like a tiny crown.<\/p>\n
The plant was formally described only in 2016, from the Doudou Mountains of south-western Gabon, in Central Africa.<\/p>\n
As descriptions at the time relied largely on pressed and preserved specimens, some physical characteristics and colours of the plant were unknown.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoments like this highlight not only the importance of long-term care in living plant collections but also what kind of patience, perseverance and highly specialised knowledge our curators need to have to make this happen,\u201d the Botanic Gardens said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes, discoveries quite literally take decades to bloom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Straits Times has contacted Singapore Botanic Gardens and the National Parks Board for more information.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE \u2013 A rare and striking plant, kept for more than 25 years as part of the Singapore Botanic Gardens\u2019 living collections, has flowered for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/69510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}