Frangipani Tree (Barbados)

Photo by Gayla Trail  All Rights Reserved

I thought I’d post a sunny photo today since we’ve been living under grey skies all week and I’m about to collapse into a no-sun, low-energy coma. Although, scrolling through folders of photos of us frolicking in the Caribbean a few months ago is kind of miserable in its own way.

I took this photo on the first of a short four-day stay in Barbados, where I saw lots of wonderfully fragrant fragipani (Plumeria) trees in bloom. If you have never smelled a real frangipani bloom I hope you get the chance someday. They are extremely sweet, soft and rich. For many they epitomize tropical floral fragrance.

We walked for miles through the countryside on that first day trying to see as much as we could. It’s a good thing I soaked it all in while I had the chance because I don’t believe I saw a single frangipani through the following three weeks. Frangipani plants do not like their roots to be waterlogged. Barbados has a MUCH drier climate than Dominica so I figure that has got to be the reason.

Here’s a link to the photo and story of the very first frangipani plant I had a chance to see and smell, ten years ago.

Gayla Trail
Gayla is a writer, photographer, and former graphic designer with a background in the Fine Arts, cultural criticism, and ecology. She is the author, photographer, and designer of best-selling books on gardening, cooking, and preserving.

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8 thoughts on “Frangipani Tree (Barbados)

  1. Frangipanis are one of my favourite tropical flowers and scents too. You can grow them easily enough from cuttings if you take a piece of branch when it’s leafless let it dry out (about 3 weeks or so) then pot it in well draining soil. I never tire of them.

  2. And we have a couple that we got for free on Stradbroke Island (Australia). There were a heap of cuttings in buckets on a front lawn with a sign saying “Free frangipani (please leave bucket!)”. Haha. We had the Belgian in-laws over, an they thought that it was hilarious that they had to share the back of the car with all the sappy branches.

  3. They grow down here in Brownsville Texas I first saw them growing in Hawaii on vacation. Moved to Texas and they are here. I love to wear them in my hair.

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