What's looking Exotic 2024

And we may have more in the next week.

 

That is gorgeous, so vibrant, @Victoria. I looked up Cape honeysuckle and saw it is ok to -5°c. Can I ask how cold your garden gets? Is -5 unheard of? Does it flower for a long time in your garden?

 

I would think minus 5 is totally unheard of in the Algarve.

 

Templetonia retusa doing quite well in the brug shade!

 

A new one on me.

 

Hello @ClematisDbee and thank you. We rarely reach zero here ... I remember (the Winter of 2013/2014 we saw Zero one morning at 6am leaving to go to Faro but it only lasted for minutes till we got out of the orchard onto the main road ... then we went to 15c that day.. Our Winters are very mild. It flowers for months It is stunning but problematic in that it roots wherever it touches the ground.

 

Another flower on the Tillandsia (Spanish Moss), I have never seen one this late.

 

Thankyou @Victoria, it sounds very warm most of the year then. I won't try to grow Cape honeysuckle in my garden, but admire yours instead!

 

Melaleuca virens, flowering again.


Protea cynaroides with hopefully a first of two flowers. I left it out last November and was hit by a sudden -7c night and three buds eventually blackened and dropped off.

 

I've put the cover up over my Strelitzia and P. cynaroides this week, its still open to the air just overhead ATM.

 

My p. cynaroides are already in. Buds on one, but the other flowers at a different time.
Here's vanda caerulea in flower. It gets chucked outside with minimal care from June to early October. I found that leaving it inside over summer in Wales didn't give enough light to stimulate buds.

Unfortunately that treatment doesn't seem enough for the rhynchostylis or whatever is the other monopodial I have - it's only ever flowered once

 

@CarolineL Lovely colour for the Vanda as its name says.

 

Thanks @On the Levels - it's blue-ish
I love the way they open quite small and over a few days seem to grow - like newly emerging butterflies