Mindo - Hike to La Reina - Flora

The variety of plants we saw on this hike was simply amazing. Due to lack of high-speed uploading capability here, I´ll just post some of the most unique examples. Here we have a flower. Not your typical garden varitey. It was a hollow tube, around a couple of inches long, with moist, sticky nectar in the middle. Jorie was enthralled by it, and I think I remember calling it her baby.















This was a somewhat similar tubular variety of flower, but these were more bulbous and bunched together. I had the distinct impression that I should hold it up to Amy´s face and squeeze the little bulb, just to see what shot out at her. But then reason gained the upper hand, I remembered all of the movies where jungle plants carried poison that would paralyze unsuspecting tourists, and I decided I should probably not.  



















This was Bentz´s favorite. It looked something like a fruit, crossed between an apple and a pear, when hanging on a tree, but then it would open up its fleshy sides like a flower and show its ribbed interior.



















Awesome hanging red flowers. Not much else to say, other than it is so amazing to see the unique non-intuitive niches that the many and varied plants must carve out in order to survive.