Its a Hot Tamale!!

by Richard Chew



I looked up the word 'Tamale' in the web and learned it is a kind of spicy Mexican dish.

However what I have here is a miniature rose known as Hot Tamale. It is called with this name, simply for its flower characteristics. It can grow up to a height of between 60cm to 90cm. The flower size is about 2 to 3 cm.


It has a unique bloom characteristics. Its petals are mainly orange red and its center is yellow in colour. It looks like lava glowing within the rose!


Gradually the orange colour fades and turn into pink, where as the yellow will fade into white. It is quite unusual.


I got my Hot Tamale bloomed with some flowers, unfortunately I didn't get this effect. The rose bud was already pink in colour when the bud started to open.






Below is picture taken at the following day. Fully opened and fully pink in colour, with darker pink veins appearing at the petals.






This is the side view. It has a nice full bloom. I wonder how it would really look like when a cluster of these miniature blooms burst out.









Earlier on (about 2 weeks earlier), I capture some photo shots on the shoots and new buds. I noticed some distortion on some leaves shape (not symmetrical). Though the leaves colour looked healthy, the distorted shape suggest that during the growth stage it lacks certain nutrients for stem and leave development.






Below is another closed up shot, and very obvious the shape of new young leaves looked odd, where as the older ones looked more symmetrical.

I believe this is due to some unsuccessful experiments (it was a trial and error thing) on the top soil, thus causes some 'bio-chemical' shock in the soil which affected the growth of the stem development.




However after correcting my soil, as I am writing this post, there were another 2 newer shoots. The newer shoots seemed to be doing well. Its leaves are darker tone (almost black) in colour , suggest it is growing well. Gradually the leaves will turn to lighter tone when its growth has reached maturity.

Below is another closed up shot. The little bud emerges. Notice the little 'bulge' at the tip of the stem?

Hopefully within 3 to 4 weeks time, I get to see the red hot lava flower bloom!

Other interesting things happened, decided to post it here.

I noticed a tiny weeny bug resting at the edge.

Remember the rotted chili that I used as fertilizer. The seed germinated! Initially I thought it was weeds, but soon realised it wasn't when I noticed it sprouted in clusters. I covered it, by over turning the soil.

Well I got to wait for another few more weeks. Hopefully by Christmas, I wish....

HOT TAMALE .... FLAME ON !!