Petsut-Gamon-Anan

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: