"Hibiscus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could fell the trees with his sharp hatchet quickly and easily. Four posts, with a crotch in the top of each, were set in the ground, forming the corners of the house. The frame was secured with nails and with ropes. The sides and the roof were then covered with the hibiscus from the grove. Noddy worked like a hero at his task, and Mollie watched him with the most intense interest; for he would not permit her to perform ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... and wooden bowls formed the only furniture in these dwellings, some of the mats being trimmed with red feathers, while others resembled shaggy white wool rugs, which, on closer inspection, proved to be made from the bark of a dwarf hibiscus, with which the islands abound, bearing a bright red flower. The food of the islanders consists of fish, coconuts, taro, yams, and breadfruit, of which ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... of the trees. No grass grew in the garden, and the flowers were not planted in beds or borders. Plants and trees sprang out of the sand, and such flowers as there were—roses, and pomegranate blossoms, hibiscus, and passion flowers—climbed, and rambled, and pushed, and hung in heavy drapery, as best they could without attention or guidance. But one of the principal paths led to a kind of arbour, or temple, where long ago palms had been planted in a ring, and had formed a high green dome, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... flowers used in these ley, or wreaths, were the creamy white blossoms with the golden centre from which the perfume frangipani is extracted. This flower is known in the Philippines as calachuchi. There were also some of the yellow, bell-shaped flowers called "campanilo," and a variety of the hibiscus which we learned to call "coral hibiscus," but which in the Philippines is ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... all our family, AND THE GUESTS, I suppose the principle being that he was still regarded as one of the household. I forgot to say that our black boy did not turn up when the feast was ready. Off went the two cooks, found him, decorated him with huge red hibiscus flowers - he was in a very dirty under shirt - brought him back between them like a reluctant maid, and, thrust him into a place between Faauma and Elena, where he was petted and ministered to. When his turn came in the kava drinking - and you may be sure, in their contemptuous, affectionate ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the sole desideratum. I remarked the castor-plant,—no one knows its name or nature [20],—the Rayhan or Basil, the Kadi, a species of aloe, whose strongly scented flowers the Arabs of Yemen are fond of wearing in their turbans. [21] Of vegetables, there were cucumbers, egg-plants, and the edible hibiscus; the only fruit was a small kind ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... girdle of bright yellow strips of plantain leaves, mixed with the scarlet leaves of the ti plant; a band of pearl-shell ornaments encircled his forehead, and his long, black hair, perfumed with scented oil, was twisted up in a high spiral knob, and ornamented with scarlet hibiscus flowers. Across one broad shoulder there hung a small, snowy-white poncho or cape, made of fine tappa cloth, and round his wrists and ankles were circlets of pearl shell, enclosed in a netting of black coir cinnet. On each leg there was tattooed, in bright blue, a coco-nut tree, its ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... ledges, here and there cut into by steep little narrow gullies. Its bottom was in part bare rock; but wherever there was an accumulation of soil, and some tiny spring oozing up through the fissures, there the vegetation grew rank, starred with vivid blooms of canna and hibiscus. In many places the ledges were draped with a dense curtain of the flat-flowered, pink-and-gold mesembryanthemum. It was a region well adapted to the ambuscading beasts; and Grom moved stealthily as a panther, ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... in envious though discreet flight by a white-bellied eagle. Low over the water, close to the fringe of jungle the eagle flew, when a grey falcon dashed out, snatched from its talons the wriggling fish, and with one swoop disappeared under a yellow-flowered hibiscus bush overhanging the tideway. The falcon is no match for the eagle; but, most subtle of birds of prey, it had watched the perplexity of its lord and master, and with audacious courage taken ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... pineapple to eat. I can speak of Red only from hearsay, but I saw the girl three years after he first met her, and she was scarcely nineteen then. You cannot imagine how exquisite she was. She had the passionate grace of the hibiscus and the rich colour. She was rather tall, slim, with the delicate features of her race, and large eyes like pools of still water under the palm trees; her hair, black and curling, fell down her back, and she wore a wreath ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... the number of plants and kinds used, etc., that I may quote, as in a few days I shall be writing on this whole subject? No one will ever convince me that it is not a very important subject to philosophical naturalists. The Hibiscus seems a very curious case, and I agree with your remarks. You say that you are glad of criticisms (by the way avoid "former and latter," the reader is always forced to go back to look). I think you ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... retrieve the character of the island. The road is hard and even, overhung with glossy branches of strange trees bearing unknown fruits, and studded on each side with pleasant villas and with negro huts. There are lovely flowers everywhere, among which the Hibiscus, called South-Sea Rose, and the Oleander, are most frequent, and most brilliant. We see many tall groves of cocoa-nut, and cast longing glances towards the fruit, which little negroes, with surprising activity, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... elongated, containing generally several seeds, are called pods. If there is but one cell and the seeds are fastened along one side, Pea-like pods, or legumes. Locust. The term capsule indicates that there is more than one cell. Catalpa, Hibiscus. ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... which are totally unknown in Europe. They grow only in certain Himalayan valleys; they possess the wonderful capacity of changing their color after midday, and do not look dead even when faded. The Latin name of this charming plant is Hibiscus mutabilis. At night they are nothing but a large knot of pressed green leaves, but from dawn till ten o'clock the flowers open and look like large snow-white roses; then, towards twelve o'clock, they begin to redden, and later in the afternoon they look as ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... parterres—one crowded with geraniums of all hues; another with proud lilies, white, orange, and purple; and another with a flowering pomegranate in the centre, while the gigantic white and blue convolvulus coveted the soil all around, mixing with the bright green leaves and crimson blossoms of the hibiscus. No one seemed to be abroad, to enjoy the garden during this the freshest hour of the day; no one but the old black gardener, Raphael, whose cracked voice might be heard at intervals from the depths of the shrubbery in the opposite corner, singing snatches ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Fever Trees, since they have the appearance of being on fire and bloom in the hot season when fever is most prevalent. Other trees whose name I do not recall bear equally large clusters of purple flowers. The palms are large and grow in great luxuriance, and the double hibiscus look like ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... HIBISCUS SYRIACUS (syn Althaea frutex).—Syrian Mallow. Syria, 1596. An old occupant of our gardens, and one that cannot be too freely cultivated. When favourably situated, it often reaches 6 feet in height, with three-lobed, neatly-toothed leaves, and with large, showy blossoms ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... kilt was of fine tapa, looking richer in the folds than any silk; her bust, which was of the colour of dark honey, she wore bare only for some half a dozen necklaces of seeds and flowers; and behind her ears and in her hair she had the scarlet flowers of the hibiscus. She showed the best bearing for a bride conceivable, serious and still; and I thought shame to stand up with her in that mean house and before that grinning negro. I thought shame, I say; for the mountebank was dressed with a big paper collar, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Guttifer—Garcinia mangostana, G. venulosa, G. Cambogia, G. morella, Ochrocarpus pentapetalus, Calophyllum Inophyllum, Mesua ferrea 35-40 Dipterocarpe—Dipterocarpus turbinatus 40-42 Malvace—Sida carpinifolia, Abutilon Indicum, Urena sinuata, Hibiscus Abelmoschus, H. tiliaceus, H. Rosa-Sinensis, Thespesia populnea, Gossypium herbaceum, Bombax malabaricum, Eriodendron anfractuosum 42-51 Sterculiace—Sterculia foetida, S. urens, Kleinhovia hospitata, Helicteres Isora, Abroma fastuosa, Theobroma ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... gravel walk from the landing to the palace gate was strewn with hibiscus and alamander and yellow convolvulus flowers, and bordered with ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... grass, and the dead branches sighed for burial. Down the narrow path she went ponderously, showing me the cannas, jasmine and rose, picking a lime or a tamarind, a bouquet of mock-orange flowers, smoothing the tuberoses, the hibiscus of many colors, the oleanders, maile ilima, Star of Bethlehem, frangipani, and, her greatest love, the tiare Tahiti. There were snakeplants, East-India cherries, coffee-bushes, custard-apples, and the hinano, the sweetness of which and of the tiare ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... In the forest the Langur lives on grain, fruit, the pods of leguminous trees, and young buds and leaves. Sir Emerson Tennent notices the fondness of an allied species for the flowers of the red hibiscus (H. rosa sinensis). The female has usually only one young one, though sometimes twins. The very young babies have not black but light-coloured faces, which darken afterwards. I have always found them most difficult to rear, requiring almost as much attention ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... out the green recesses of the 'Toi' came the plaintive coo of the wood-pigeon. In and out of the branches of the magnificent 'Fau' tree, which overhangs the grave, a king-fisher, sea-blue, iridescent, flitted to and fro, whilst a scarlet hibiscus, in full flower, showed up royally against the gray lichened cement. All around was light and life and colour, and I said to myself, 'He is made one with nature'; he is now, body and soul and spirit, commingled with the loveliness around. He who longed in life ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... face of flower, Nodding plumes where she alights, In the white hibiscus bower She lingers through the soft spring nights — Nights too short, though wearing late Till the mimosa days are born. Never more affairs of State Wake them in the early morn. Wine-stained moments on the wing, Moonlit hours go luting by, She who leads the flight of Spring Leads the midnight revelry. ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... ingredients are few, and all easy to get, but it would be difficult to find the lucky moment! You want twelve ounces of the pollen of the white peone, which flowers in spring, twelve ounces of the pollen of the white summer lily, twelve ounces of the pollen of the autumn hibiscus flower, and twelve ounces of the white plum in bloom in the winter. You take the four kinds of pollen, and put them in the sun, on the very day of the vernal equinox of the succeeding year to get ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... principle being that he was still regarded as one of the household. I forgot to say that our black boy did not turn up when the feast was ready. Off went the two cooks, found him, decorated him with huge red hibiscus flowers—he was in a very dirty undershirt—brought him back between them like a reluctant maid, and thrust him into a place between Faauma and Elena, where he was petted and ministered to. When his turn came in the kava drinking—and you may be sure, in their contemptuous, affectionate kindness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... took them home again. I was invited to visit an old fashioned flower garden a few days ago. I did so and found it old, old fashioned indeed. The flower beds were arranged here and there in the vegetable garden. Phlox seemingly four feet high, Hibiscus that would certainly measure ten feet around the largest part of the bush, and a few other plants of the same order. All the bloom was very scattering and very small and quite inferior to what up-to-date flower beds ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... with the turbaned women moving among the cane, then the long white road with its splendid setting of royal palms, winding past a hill with groves of palms, marble fountains and statues, terraces covered with hibiscus and orchid, and another Great House on its summit. Far to the right, through an opening in the hills, was a glimpse ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... speckless white suits than I had, though it's a matter almost of routine for officers to go dirty on anything but the swell liners. Holes in socks grew together under her fingers, so that you had to look close to see where they'd been. She even kept a kind of dwarf hibiscus, with bright red flowers, alive and flourishing in the thick salt air; and she was always slipping into the galley to give a new, tasty turn ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... three-fourths of an inch long. I packed some of its thick fleshy roots in a tin case. I also here obtained specimens of a beautiful Hovea, with long lanceolate leaves, a much finer shrub than H. celsii. Also a species of Hibiscus, with rough palmate leaves, large bright sulphur-coloured flowers, with a rich purple spot at the base of each petal, the stamens and stigma bright red, the blossoms when fully expanded eight inches in circumference; the plant has a very erect ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... villages. One would have thought that it would be the reverse, and that the coast districts would have made it their principal business. The trade being confined to the interior, is probably occasioned by its proximity to the raw material which abounds in the bush, viz. the bark of the hibiscus, already referred to ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... for fishing [by the natives] are made by the men from the bark of the kurrajong (Hibiscus heterophyllus), a shrub which is ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... twining, scrambling bush, with finely-pinnated mimosa leaves. That is the 'Flower-fence,' {78b} so often heard of in past years; and round it hurries to and fro a great orange butterfly, larger seemingly than any English kind. Next to it is a row of Hibiscus shrubs, with broad crimson flowers; then a row of young Screw-pines, {78c} from the East Indian Islands, like spiral pine-apple plants twenty feet high standing on stilts. Yes: surely we are in the Tropics. Over the low roof (for the cottage is all of one ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... for dabbling in mud; and here, by scraping away the surface-sand, he has come upon a clayey soil sufficiently fertile to satisfy his wants. The growth is confined to tobacco, potatoes, and cabbages, purslain (Portulaca, pourpier), radishes, the edible Hibiscus, and tomatoes, which are small and green. Lettuces do not thrive; cucumbers and water-melons have been tried here and up country; ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... the instincts of her race. She completed the nest in about a week's time, without any aid from her mate, who indeed appeared but seldom in her company and was now become nearly silent. For fibrous materials she broke, hackled, and gathered the flax of the asclepias and hibiscus stalks, tearing off long strings and flying with them to the scene of her labors. She appeared very eager and hasty in her pursuits, and collected her materials without fear or restraint while three men were working in the neighboring walks ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... immediately near the edge of the bay were covered with riotous lianas that looped themselves like pythons from limb to limb, and from whose green masses blazing red flowers appeared at intervals like watchful eyes. Scarlet hibiscus and perfumed frangipanni were everywhere, while climbing jasmine tried to cover up the black basalt rocks in the foreground as if to hide everything that was ugly from the eyes of the visitor. The sweet, intoxicating ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... engravings), with its floor freshly scoured and sanded, while a simple deal stand in the centre bore a vase filled with the rarest and most exquisite wild-flowers I had ever seen (from the gorgeous amaryllis and hibiscus of these regions, down to wax-like blossoms of fragile delicacy and beauty, whose very names I knew not), and its many small diamond-paned casement-windows, all neatly curtained with coarse white muslin ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... Mrs. Browne at once. I remember I found her sitting under a flaming hibiscus bush. She looked very pale and washed-out against it. I told her that her husband wanted to extend his tour. She burst into tears, and said she could not understand it. Then I told her that I meant ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... plants (unless one intends to reduce or thin the bloom) is just after the flowering season. (2) The summer-blooming woody plants usually produce their flowers on shoots that grow early in the same season. This is true of grapes, quince, hybrid perpetual roses, shrubby hibiscus, crape myrtle, mock orange, hydrangea (paniculata), and others. Pruning in winter or early spring to secure strong new shoots is, therefore, the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... in chariot rideth she, As lovely flower of the hibiscus tree, So fair her face; and when about they wheel, Her girdle gems of Ken themselves reveal. For beauty all the House of Keang have fame; Its eldest ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... partly decayed stick of the Hibiscus, about six feet in length, and half as many inches in diameter, with a small, bit of wood not more than a foot long, and scarcely an inch wide, is as invariably to be met with in every house in Typee as a box of lucifer matches in the corner of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... sometimes rugged pathways, the luxuriance of vegetation did not decrease, but the lofty trees, overshadowing the road, defended the pedestrian from the effects of a fervent sun, rendering the walk under their umbrageous covering cool and pleasant. The gay flowers of the hibiscus tiliaceus, as well as the splendid huth or Barringtonia speciosa, covered with its beautiful flowers, the petals of which are white, and the edges of the stamina delicately tinged with pink, give to the trees when in full bloom a magnificent ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... river to which this was a tributary, but, on the contrary, two other sorts. There was much novelty in the trees and plants. One tree in particular, growing in the bed of the river, had the thin white shining bark of the tea-tree (mimosa), and drooping leaves shaped like those of the eucalyptus; a HIBISCUS allied to, if not the same, with II. LINDLEYI, but not in flower; a CASSIA, perhaps C. CORONILLOIDES in ripe fruit, or at least closely allied to it, occupied the dry sandy ground with MONENTELES REDOLENS, a silveryheaded weed; and some Cinchonad allied to Coffea, with ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... entered by a narrow, intricate passage of the deepest indigo. And beyond the reef and beyond the blue, nestling among cocoanut trees and bananas, umbrella trees and breadfruits, oranges, mangoes, hibiscus, algaroba, and passion-flowers, almost hidden in the deep, dense greenery, was Honolulu. Bright blossom of a summer sea! ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... was almost wholly of rhizophores, white and red; the wood of the latter burns like coal, and the bark is admirable for tanning. In places their long suckers, growing downwards to the stream, resembled a cordwainer's walk set on end. A bush of yellow-flowered hibiscus clothes the banks that are less level; and, higher still, grows a tall and beautiful mimosa with feathery web and pendent pods of brightest green and yellow. Then came the brabs and palms, fan-, cocoa-, oil-, and bamboo-, with their trunks ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... The HIBISCUS This class numbers many ornamental plants, the blossoms of which all maintain the same character of having a darkened spot at the ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... o'clock on a glorious morning, January first. On the river bank some trees, which did not appear to me to be indigenous, were covered with lovely flowers resembling hibiscus, some scarlet, some yellow. I had my men gather a small bunch, which for several hours proved attractive in the prosaic Malay prahu. The equatorial regions have not the abundance of beautiful flowers that is credited to them by popular belief. The graceful pitcher-plants (nepenthes) are wonderful ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... embowered. The season seems to have been too damp for the night-jars, though quite to the taste of all species of pigeons. In the course of a few minutes the voice of the timid, tremulous, barred-shouldered dove came from among the yellow-flowered hibiscus of the beach, while the pheasant-tailed pigeon sounded its rich, dual note, the red-crowned fruit pigeon tolled its mournful chime, and the guttural of the magnificent fruit pigeon—often heard, but seldom seen—came from the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... lines!") had been called out several of the canoes around our own began to pull up fish—four to six pounders. I was fishing with a white cotton line, with two hooks, and Mareko with the usual native gear—a hand-made line of hibiscus bark with a barbless hook made from a long wire nail, with its point ground fine and well-curved inwards. We both struck fish at the same moment, and I knew by the zigzag pull that I had two. Up they came together—three spotted beauties about eighteen inches ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... majority of the human race still live and move and have their being, and to feel that after all their mode of life, though lacking in Greek iambics, wallpapers, and the Saturday Review, yet appeals in its own beach-comberish way to some of one's inmost and deepest yearnings. The hibiscus that flames before the wattled hut, the parrot that chatters from the green and golden mango-tree, the lithe, healthy figures of the children in the stream, are some compensation for the lack of London mud, London fog, and London illustrations of practical Christianity in the Isle of Dogs ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... which appears to us to be obtained from the 'Hibiscus Esculentus,' is absolutely needful in the fabrication of the stuff, which being occasionally two or three yards wide and fifty long, are composed of small pieces of the bark. The women employed at this work wore very old and ragged ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... star-like lovers fared, since they gave the world and all its Imperial Courts the slip. There they have discovered an innocent and lovely race, adorned only with shells and the flowers of hibiscus; and, intermingled with that race, in accordance with indigenous marriage ceremonies, the crew of the Santa Margherita now rear a dusky brood. In her last extant letter, addressed to the leader of the corps de ballet at the Ring Theatre in Vienna, Madame Milli ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson |
