Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Tropical Garden #67, 1 by tropicbreeze

tropicbreeze wrote:
Thanks Rita. I'm home this weekend, and for the week. Good opportunity for a bit of photography. Although, there's a lot of work to be done.

Cleaned up a lot of fallen Coconut fronds from that lightning strike a while back. There's still a smell of boiled vegetation around that garden despite it being about a month since it happened. A fifth Coconut looks like it's dying, that lightning bolt must have really spread out. The Philodendron in one of the Coconuts must have had the lightning come down through it as well. The stems are up 30 to 40 millimetres in diameter but they became soft and mushy inside. The aerial roots were okay for a few weeks, now they're mushy as well. Some new shoots along the main stems fell off so I'm hoping they'll survive. And fronds have been raining down damaging the garden nearby. I've cleaned them all up but there's still a lot just hanging ready to fall. I've got lots of sprouting Coconuts of various heights but I'm not goint to plant any more back there. Smaller plants will be safer without them.

The Coconut with the (fried) Philodendron. The roots clinging to the trunk and the aerial roots are still there, and you can see the shrivelled stems.