Tey from Thailand requested pictures of
Hpetsut, Gamon, and Anan flowers from me. I guess Tey may be a
student of Myanmar language (judging from my post to which him/her
request has been added) or just someone generally interested in
Myanmar. Anyway I am glad myself to find out more about these flowers
and glad to share what I've found to all lovers of trees, flowers,
and Myanmar.
Frankly, I have not known until now
that Hphetsut (Phetsut, or Petsut) is the name of a tree and its
flower, though I'm quite familiar with Petsut-(rain) or
Petsut-(water) or Petsut-(mushroom). Myanmar-English dictionary by
the Myanmar Language Commission gives Petsut, Gamon-In, and Anan as:
Gamon is a generic name today for
ornamental herbs grown indoor or outdoor and therefore there is no
specific flower associated with it. So Tey's “Gamon” would most
likely to be the Gamon-In orchid which Common
Names from the Checklist of the Plants of Myanmar
website of the Smithsonian Institution identifies as Dendrobium
scabrilingue.
Searching
for pictures of Engelhardtia
spicata (Petsut)
and Dendrobium
scabrilingue (Gamon-In)
gives a large number of hits and below are some from Thailand. Petsut
picture is from Flickriver.
Gamon-In
picture is from
http://www.sa.ac.th/biodiversity/contents/3plant/3.7.2.html
Around 1965 while I was with a land
survey team working near the famous Kyaik-hti-yo pagoda in the Mon
Sate, Myanmar I remember seeing miniature orchids said to be Gamon-in
sold on the roadside. As far as I can remember the plants were erect
with terminal racemes of white, star shaped flowers less than 1 inch
across, deliciously scented, on pseudobulbs not much more than 4
inches or so tall. I think they looked more like Dendrobium
draconis than Dendrobium scabrilingue.
As for Anan, only a week ago I
was trying to identify the famous heritage tree I had photographed in
the Botanic garden in Singapore on May 13, 2014 and as you would have
guessed it turned out to be the Anan tree! They called it the
Tembusu tree:
