Pretty Rainforest Flowers

Here are some pretty flowers that I found in the rainforest while hiking with tourists. Unfortunately, I don't know their English and Latin names. If you know, please e-mail me. As a matter of fact, the main attraction that I offer to tourists who travel with me around the tropical rainforest in West Papua is not flower watching but bird and wildlife watching. There are a lot of birds and wild animals that are endemic to New Guinea that tourists like to see. Most often, when the tourists see beautiful flowers in the jungle, they will stop for a while to take some close up pictures using the macro setting of their cameras.
I shot the following rainforest flowers using Nikon Coolpix P500. The tropical rainforest in West Papua is rich of colorful flowers including orchids.

Saturday 12 May 2012 Update

Today I am able to identify the above flowers. After searching in Google for a few hours on the internet using such keywords as rainforest tree flowers, or tree flower from tropical rainforest, finally, I got several web-pages that provide its name. In Latin, it is called Spathodea campanulata whereas in English, it is called Fountain Tree, African Tulip Tree and Flame of the Forest. This flower tree can easily be seen when we go hiking in the low elevation forest around Manokwari. The height of this tree can reach up to 25 meters. I still have to find the names of the flowers below. 

Most of the flowers that I shot were not far from me but the pink ones on the third picture above were  hanging on a vine some 5 meters above my head on a slope under a big tree. I had to walk through shrubs, and thorny vines to shoot them. After nearly 15 minutes shooting those trumpet like flowers, I finally was able to shoot them using the super zoom feature of my Nikon P500 camera. The result was a little bit blurred because I was shooting them in low light condition. Nikon has improved the capability of its point and shoot camera by increasing the super telephoto capability to 42 x in its newest product the Nikon Coolpix P510. This bridge camera is suitable for anybody who is interested in taking pictures of distant subjects. I recommend the Nikon Coolpix P510 to you if you need compact superzoom camera. With its 42x optical zoom (equivalent to 1,000 mm in 35 mm lens format), the Nikon Coolpix P510 now is a bridge camera with the highest super zoom capability.  

If you are interested in seeing flowers in the tropical rainforest of West Papua, and need a guide to accompany you around, please, contact me via my email: peace4wp@gmail.com.

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Passion Fruit Flower