The humble hibiscus

I have always looked at the hibiscus flower as a humble one, though I don't know why so. It is quite an attractive flower, does not require any extra inputs for flowering so liberally, and the flowers, the leaves are super beneficial for us - be it as a natural shampoo, for making hair oils, or making super tasty hibiscus flower juices.

I remember my childhood when we kids used to collect the flowers and feed them to the calf which relished and would consume them and would allow us to caress it.  Even cows love hibiscus flowers very much.

Collecting these flowers for the Onam (one of the key festivals of Kerala -India) floral circles called Pookkalam was a craze as these flowers are available in plenty and would make multiple circles with hibiscus flowers of different colours. Sometimes, when flowers are scarce, we even collect the leaves and make a green circle though it was considered among children as cheating.

So I still don't know why I consider this being a "humble" flower.

But look at it again, don't you also feel like it is a humble flower?

Hibiscus - a common flower and some interesting facts!

Today I thought I will write about the common Hibiscus flower which are so common to most of us. There are varieties and varieties of hibiscus with different colours, different petal arrangements and so on. Here is the photo of a flower from our own mini-garden!


Now some interesting facts about the flower. This is used as flower, a vegetable, a herb, a cosmetic and what not! The vegetable roselle is a hibiscus variety and is used in South India for making chutneys, pickles and even curries. Hibiscus juice is another attraction where hibiscus flowers are immersed in lemon juice and processed to get a very tasty juice concentrate!. Women use hibiscus leaves and flowers for hair-care by making a shampoo of it and this is a natural treatment for hair fall and dandruff. Just pick a handful of leaves and a few flowers and scrub on a rocky surface (usually ponds are lined with rocky plates in Kerala) with a bit of water and you get a rick, bubbling shampoo. It is no-cost and healthy too. Again petals of hibiscus are used in treatment of fever and its roots have properties which cure cough. Dieters or persons with kidney problems often take it without adding sugar for its beneficial properties and as a natural diuretic. It is made by boiling the dehydrated flowers in water; once it is boiled, it is allowed to cool and drunk with ice. So go home and make some hibiscus juice right away!

Hibiscus flowers have also other values. The red flowers are offered the Goddess of Kali and Ganesh. As kids, we used to remove the petals from the flower and then blow through the tiny openings at the base of the petal and the petal will blow up a bit like a balloon. It seems children in Philippines make bubbles with hibiscus flower and leave extraction by blowing into the solution by using hollow papaya stalks.

Now some humour also. Wearing a single hibiscus flower on only one of your ears is symbol of being a lunatic person in Kerala (India). (Normally depicted in films though I have not seen any lunatics doing this in real life). But if the wearer of the flower on a single ear is Hawaiian woman it has a different meaning. A single flower tucked behind the ear indicates that the woman is available for marriage. Interesting ...isn't it?