Sugar and Spice Park

So there is a local state park here in Florida City (south Miami) that has fruit as well as spice plants from all over the world. We spent a little time there one afternoon.I have no idea what his flower is but it is beautiful and was so colorfull.

The park had different areas dedicated to areas such as Africa, Asia, South America, Central America as well as local produce.

This cool flower is from the Ylang ylang plant. One of my favorite scents, and surprisingly delicate looking flower. The scent was lovely.

This cute little plant looks like it has a pepper growing from it but actually it is not a pepper at all. It is called the miracle fruit. Why, because this fruit has the ability to make anything taste sweet. If you tasted some lemon and then ate this fruit, then some more lemon, it would taste sweet. I have no idea how it works but it does....cool hey

This fruit is called a elephant sausage...it grows very large and as you can see from the face here, it is also very heavy. They are called elephant fruit because elephants are about the only ones big and strong enoough to break it open and eat the tough pulpy insides...
They also have a section of poisonous plants. This plant is a oleander tree. I didnt know that the whole tree is poisonous. I thought that only the leaves were but apparantley not. And the little creature on the leave is a catapiller that is also poisonous. They are very brightly colored and oddly enough the birds know not to eat them. The can tell from the color....neat hey? Good old mother nature.
This funny looking thing is actually the start of a banana bunch growing. See at the top of the long stem....those are bananas. They will grow all the way down the stem right up to the bright red colored flower.This little gem is called the lipstick fruit. Not a very imaginative name considering that the use of this fruit was used exactly for that. Lipstick or coloring for makeup

Sorry, the pic is blurry but you can see how the seed pods stain your hand, or whatever you would put them on....

So, that was a cool afternoon .