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  • News & article

    Embracing bee season

    B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 31/07/2016

    » I was standing on the veranda of our country home when I noticed a swarm of little white butterflies milling around the canopy of a rainbow eucalyptus. The tree was in bloom, and as I watched the butterflies fluttering from flower to flower, I could not help but marvel at the wonders of nature. Where did the butterflies come from? Other plants were in bloom as well, but why were they only attracted to this particularly tree? I had no doubt in my mind that the flowers were also pollinated by bees and other insects, but why were they visited by only one kind of butterfly?

  • News & article

    Raising a peep

    B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 29/11/2015

    » Grant Howlett is an Australian expatriate with a reasonable knowledge of things botanical in his home country. But when it comes to Asian plant life, “alas, I have lots to learn”, he wrote. “I did reside for many years in the tropics of northern Australia, and many plants there are also here, like the foxtail palm which is originally from Australia but now prolific here in Thailand, but when it comes to trees I am lost.”

  • News & article

    More than their rare share

    B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 11/10/2015

    » The early bird gets the worm, so serious collectors do not visit Chatuchak plant market on Wednesdays and Thursdays. They go on Tuesdays, in order to be the first to get their hands on rare or newly introduced plants. The market does not really get busy until 6pm, when office people have returned from work, but many stalls are ready for business as early as 3pm.

  • News & article

    For plump fruit, Starve the tree

    B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 29/09/2013

    » Five years ago I planted a Moringa oleifera tree, known in Thai as marum, on one side of my house. It began flowering when it was about three years old and since then has been flowering heavily most months of the year. Although I have seen insects pollinating the flowers, they never developed into fruit.

  • News & article

    National tree's great white hope revealed at last

    B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 05/05/2013

    » I don't remember now if I read or heard from someone many years ago that Cassia fistula, known in Thai as ratchapruek, has a mutant strain with white flowers. Cassia fistula is the Thai national tree and produces the national flower and is a familiar sight along Bangkok's streets and provincial roads, as well as in public parks and private gardens throughout the country. However despite how ubiquitous the tree, is until recently I had never seen one with white flowers. Once, passing through Lop Buri while travelling to Phetchabun, I saw a tree whose flowers were a few shades lighter than most, but they were still yellow, not white.

  • News & article

    Primordial plants bring beauty and health to the modern world

    B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 09/06/2013

    » Selaginella, collectively known as spike moss, are not your ordinary kind of plants. Classified among the "lower plants" for their lack of flowers and seeds, they belong to a group which dominated the Earth's surface long before flowering plants and trees made their appearance. Fossil finds trace their origins to the Carboniferous period 290-354 million years ago. As a genus, they comprise more than 400 species worldwide.

  • News & article

    Possibilities bloom for gardeners at annual flora fair

    B Magazine, Normita Thongtham, Published on 03/02/2013

    » Since I really have no more space for them, buying plants was the farthest thing from my mind when I attended the opening of the eight-day Eastern Flora Exhibition and Contest in Chon Buri, which ended last Sunday. But my resolve vanished when I saw adenium, or chuan chom in Thai, hybrids I had never seen before. Many had double petals and looked like roses, and came in different colour combinations, like dark red bordered by black, or light green splashed with pink. In my mind, I suddenly found space for them on the small balcony in my bedroom, and my husband, ML Charuphant, and I went home loaded with plants.

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