Day 4 - Mont Fleuri Botanical Gardens, Victoria

Visiting the botanical gardens of Victoria - Visite du jardin botanique de Victoria

Beautiful and peaceful gardens, especially as there was hardly anybody else when we visited them. Too bad it wasn't orchid season, so we didn't see any, but the garden still has some lush - and surprising - plants and flowers on display...

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Un jardin botanique paisible et au paysage varié, les orchidées n'étaient pas de saison, mais on a quand même pu contempler de très beaux - et parfois surprenants - spécimens de plantes et de fleurs.

 
                                        a white hibiscus - and the traveller's tree (ravenala madagascariensis), so-called because weary travellers can always find something to drink by breaking off one of its leaf stalks, which can contain up to 2 litres of liquid.

allamanda (allamanda cathartica) - ostrich plume ginger (alpinia purpurata) - sky flower (thunbergia grandiflora)

Thomas the giant tortoise

The star of the show: the coco de mer palm (lodoicea maldivica), this female tree a gift from the Duke of Edinburgh - it does not bear fruit until it's twenty-five years old, and then produces the famous double conconut (the largest seed in the world), and it takes up to seven years for the fruit to mature!!

the canonball tree (couroupita guiata), so called because of the shape of its fruit - a detail of the garden

the Madagascar Fody, introduced species who is now omnipresent in the Seychelles, they're not too unsociable either, and you often see them, of a morning, pecking at the leftover crumbs on or under breakfast tables, their bright livery is only equalled by their enchanting trill.

another one of my favourite flowers... ;-)