Tree Memories

There was a beautiful tree that I could see from my window the very first time I lived abroad. I spent a lot of time looking at that tree with its relatively bare branches, which ended in a lovely flower but along them left lots of room between its broad leaves. Growing up in Indiana the tree was new to me and other than the twin maple trees outside my childhood bedroom or the magnolia tree I was assigned to observe over the course of a semester in my 4^th grade science unit on “trees”, no tree had my attention for so long.

Lovely tree.

Seeing these trees in Honiara was reassuringly familiar. They have popped up in my life a few times since then. But there are many here and they aren’t hidden by high walls that obstruct most beautiful gardens in many countries in central or east Africa I’ve lived or visited.

At the roadside. 

There name wasn’t familiar – Frangipani. I must have known them by their Creole name in Martinique, which I’ve since forgotten. My French colleague says “frangipani” in French usually refers to sweets’ filling, when I asked her the tree’s French name. 

Single flower - often used as decoration. 

A variety of frangipani that is more like a shrub than tree.