The intoxicating scent drifted towards me and then retreated- a little shy of its magnificence I think?
When I found the source, no wonder....it was the gnarly old grapefruit tree.
This tree rarely does much, besides scratch and scare little children, it might have produced a few blossoms once, years ago, and I vaguely remember two small' flattish' round pale- yellow fruits.
A thick skin and sour citrus smell, our eldest duly tasted it and declared it so sour that she might never recover.. and this from a child that grazed on little yellow 'sour suck' flowers!
Whatever the reason for this extraordinary blossoming...
Thank you, gnarly old tree for all these deliciously fragrant blossoms (blogger needs a scratch 'n sniff panel) -
we've taken some cuttings and I see a future filled with the heady scent for grapefruit blossoms.
I've never seen a grapefruit tree, let alone one in bloom. Wow! Zone envy...
ReplyDeleteRachelle- its really the strangest thing-
ReplyDeleteI've tried to get a pic of the whole tree, but its quite small, about as tall as me and right next to a largish yellow wood tree and surrounded by dense shrubs,(its usually not very pretty!) so in my pics you can't distinguish it.
By the look of the blossoms, we'll have some more of those strange grapefruits, so I'll take some more pics then.
Its definitely not an 'eating' grapefruit probably good for marmalade??
But wow does it smell good......
Karen I hate to burst your bubble, but my three ruby grapefruit trees on the farm in Zululand, are 3m tall but almost 5 m in diameter. They like the tropics! The scent and that of any citrus flower is exquisite! Your photos of the flowers are beautiful. Love Jen Tul
ReplyDeleteJen- I've got a beautiful pic in my head of those magnificent trees! They probably like the tropics a bit more than colder Cape town, I want to pick the blossoms for the house, but they seem to open one at a time! Now if I had 3 trees like you..I'd pick with wild abandon!! x
ReplyDelete