"My Precious"

"My Precious" Wednesday morning beauties today were 2 gorgeous blossoms: Ipomoea alba (aka: moonflower) and Abelmoschus manihot (aka: manihot hibiscus). Moonflower is the lovely and fragrant night blooming precious which is the cousin of morning glories and sweet potatoes.




I planted a "privacy fence" of them in pots next to the Airstream so that I could have something to bathe behind. The only thing is I usually go ahead and bathe in front of them because there is more room... The blooms are a pure perfect white and the smell reminds me of something distant and sad but beautiful.
The other precious, manihot hibiscus, is a cousin of okra, and originally comes from East Asia (a place I will soon be). It has a velvety cream colored flower with a very dark velvety sinister maroon center.



It is the softest looking flower I have seen. Manihot is used as an annual ornamental in these parts, but in Japan it is known as tororoaoi and is a key ingredient in "washi" paper making. The roots are crushed to extract a vegetable mucilage called "neri" which is used to keep other plant fibers evenly suspended in water during the paper making process (or so says my quick morning search on the "world wide web"). I wonder if it could be employed medicinally in place of marshmallow root, (another cousin I think) whose mucilaginous roots are used to sooth dry coughs and other dry conditions.
At any rate, I hope you, dear readers, enjoy these pictures and this text about my morning "precious." Love, Dana