two plants

A quick little post to start the Saturday off.  As you may be aware (insert eye rolls here), I recently visited Micronesia.  FSM sits about 6 degrees north of the equator.  The land is gently mountainous.  The upshot is that it is - duh! - tropical.  And lush.

Greenery covered the island from what we could see.  Stevenson, who was from the Marshall Islands, a country of atolls, remarked on how green everything was from his perspective, but those of us from California could also appreciate that it wasn't golden brown and dry.

In our modest travel on foot and by vehicle around the island, I was struck by how often I saw two plants in particular:  bananas and papayas.  I've seen both before - it's not unusual to see them in Hawaii, after all.  But here?  So much more.  Bananas everywhere, and the same seemed to be the case for the papayas.  Curiously, while we were served a lot of banana in our meals, I don't recall being served or even seeing papaya on menus.

I took a couple of early morning walks and captured a couple of cool shots, or so I thought.  One, a bunch of bananas with the flower at the end of the stalk. 

I wonder if they also eat the flower.  The other, a papaya flower. 

I've never been up close to a papaya plant and seen the flower, and I was delighted by the discovery.

Oh, and for good measure, here's a land crab we encountered on the road side on the last morning!