Flowers

I love flowers. Who doesn't? This week in particular, I was reminded of the silly antics my friends and I used to perform with flowers (when we were really little), as I typed up about 20 pages from a botany book on ... you guessed it, flowers, for an assignment.

First up is the crazy beautiful Gulmohar flower. It grows in India, and I haven't yet seen one Gulmohar tree in New Zealand. Four of its fan-shaped petals are bright red, and one of them pale yellow, spotted and specked with red. How purdy is that?! It has five [no more, no less] calyxes {ooh, trying to sound flashier by using botanical terms ;) }, as seen in the picture:

Now, the trick is to remove the calyxes, peel the red bit off them - it comes off quite easy - so that the green shows through, and stick them on your fingernails. Voila, you're the Onida devil:

Alternatively, you could also pull the anthers off the flower, and use each one as a sword to pull off your opponent's spore-thingy on their anther. Yes, silly, I know. I guess I didn't realise back then that flowers were meant to be looked at, not picked at. Oh well ...

Second was the Conch flower [I just found out it was called that!]. We halved the outer conch, but didn't separate it from the flower. And it made the flower look like a bird (with the two halves its wings). 

Oh yeah, I also remember getting some water, some clear shampoo, and mixing it with random petals. Then I let my "flowery shampoo" stand for about a week. Then I realised that I had to throw it away. It just wasn't working. :P

That's a teensy bit of my childhood right there. Do you remember any of the silly things you did as a child, with flowers? Do share! :)

Edit: Have you used the Flowers application on Orisinal? I did. One day last year, I just sent a bunch of flowers to a bunch of lovely friends. I also downloaded some tracks from Orisinal, they're just so so lovely to hear! Let me know if you want me to post the link to where I got them from!