This plant is a prolific bloomer and actually attracts loads of bees and butterfly. Commonly known as golden tree drop due to the fruits appearing to be a cascading features and these are also very much cultivated for ornamental purpose.
Botanically these are known as duranta erecta where it's very much cultivated for the beautiful blue, bluish violet flowers. Coming to the features of this particular flower, these are actually one day bloomers where the flowers do tend to wither away in a day but there are many flower buds and these actually bloom on a daily sequence and I've noticed that this is constantly blooming and they have not failed to stop flowering. As I mentioned earlier that these do attract butterflies and bees, here I've managed to capture this particular butterfly commonly known as a common Blue Bottle.
This particular butterfly what I can see here is a rare occurrence which I've not really seen them very often in my garden. However one of the things that I've noticed here is that though this is a common tropical butterfly, it does appears to be very beautiful and here I managed to capture it and I would like to showcase this particular butterfly with the bloom here in this particular video. Just a little bit about this particular butterfly commonly known as common Blue Bottle, this caterpillars are actually found in a in a host plant especially known as a wild cinnamon tree and to make sense of it what I realized that this wild cinnamon trees are actually planted as a ornamental plant along the roadside around my region, hence I believe this is where the caterpillars would have came from hence these butterflies are actually being the pollinators around my garden.
I can say that particularly this type of butterflies their lifespan is actually very short most likely about three weeks to a month. Hence uh most butterflies their lifespan is about a month or few months and of course this is why in tropical region uh care is needed to be given properly to cultivate and care for uh wildlife and nature beings because a slight imbalance can actually throw them of course and these creatures can become extinct.
Now coming back to duranta there are a few varieties of durantha's available around my region in a tropical mostly they are actually cultivated for ornamental purpose. In here what I'm actually growing is the type that is very much cultivated for the blooms and so they do not have a particular stature where this these appear to be more like a one singular plant is actually more like a shrub and so therefore they will just grow tall and they will constantly in blooms.
There are other types of varieties this particular kind there is one which is purely white known as Alba and there's another one which is very much on blue tones. So this is a more on a darker version of a bloom there's more on a bluish violet tone, so you can't really see it here in the camera but however these are the only tree available varieties that is sold as ornamental plants. There is another particular variety that is sold as uh which is actually used as hedging more like a border plant it may not have very strong prolific blooms, the flowers may be very insignificant but however they do have a very nice uh foliage uh features where it is often will be trimmed and cut and made into more like a hedges and border plants more on on that context and I've actually seen those in that kind of variety where it's also in a variegated colored leaves.
Apart from this I find that this particular plant, duranta do not have actually any pests on them they are quite durable and if you notice this pendant-like flowers, it seems to be that they are actually a care-free plant I even do not actually fertilize them and I'll just leave them open to sun and rain. So in a way I've noticed that they do not have past and very easy to care for very hardy and durable plant.
One of the factors that I do often is that I constantly prune them to keep them in check and balance because I find that they can appear to be a little bit more messy looking, very leggy so controlling them and cutting them and keeping them in shape somehow makes them bloom much more better we can see they are actually branching out everywhere.
Another factor here is that you can actually use this prune branches for propagation, just poke them in the soil and they will just pop up with roots and they are a stable plant and a separate plant to be cultivated as an extra plant but however they are a woody plant and so it's more like a shrub like a small miniature tree type of plant so do take note that they can be a little bit bushy and messy looking.
