Scenes around the Sarawak Museum Garden

Today I went to see the Sarawak Museum grounds.  The Sarawak Museum building has stood the test of time since it was built in 1891 by Charles Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak.

This is the view of the garden area of the Sarawak Museum seen from the back of the building. The Sarawak Museum building is in the middle ground of the picture. The tall building in the background is the Merdeka Palace, a 5-star hotel within walking distance of the museum.

The road sign indicates other buildings located close by the museum ground. This is the gradual climb  leading to the front of the museum building.

Walking up the small hill on which the museum is situated I met a line of the tropical and native palm of Sarawak called the  sealing wax palm ( Cyrtostachys renda) having orange sheaths. This variety is unique because normally the prevalent variety is the red coloured ones.

An interesting garden feature within the museum garden grounds. There are plenty of blooms that caught my attention today like the official flower of Malaysia called the hibiscus ( Hibiscus rosa-sinensis) or the shoe flower grown by the many colours and varieties as shown below.

In Honour of Hibiscus

Over the decades, the Hibiscus Flower has been depicted in Malaysia's postage stamps.  While skimming through my stamps albums I managed to collect a few memorable stamps that were illustrated with the hibiscus flower from as far back as 1967.  The stamp on the botton left clearly showed the date of the stamp based on its issue in celeberating the 10  Years Anniversary of Malayan Independence from British colonial rule ( 1957-1967)

The Hibiscus Flower is generally known as 'Bunga Raya " in Malaysia.  There are hundreds of species of the hibiscus and even more hybrids as more and more people become adapt in hybridizing them.  However my love is still the red hibiscus which is single petalled. There are others that come in semi-double or double petals in various colours and combinations. I have attempted to make some flower arrangement using the hibiscus flowers.  Guys ..and ..Gals..You all invited to see my compositon of the hibiscus flowers in my daily cut flowers blog.