"Hibiscus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in June along a path gay with the opening efflorescence of the hibiscus and entangled here and there with the wild blossoms of the convolvulus,—two magnitudes might have been seen approaching one another. The one magnitude who held a tennis-racket in his hand, carried himself with a beautiful erectness and ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... number of pollen-grains necessary for fertilisation. sexual affinities of Nicotiana. Verbascum phoeniceum. experiments with pollen of Hibiscus vesicarius. ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... pineapple to eat. I can speak of Red only from hearsay, but I saw the girl three years after he first met her, and she was scarcely nineteen then. You cannot imagine how exquisite she was. She had the passionate grace of the hibiscus and the rich colour. She was rather tall, slim, with the delicate features of her race, and large eyes like pools of still water under the palm trees; her hair, black and curling, fell down her back, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... which dwells in the dim jungle and constructs of decaying leaves and wood and light loam the most trustworthy of incubators, and wastes no valuable time in the dead-and-alive duty of sitting, to the tiny sun-bird of yellow and purple, which flits all day among scarlet hibiscus blooms, sips nectar from the flame-tree, and rifles the dull red studs of the umbrella ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... everywhere; electric lights were doubly festooned along the sea wall, drooping creeper-like from palm to palmetto, from flowering hibiscus to sprawling banyan, from dainty china-berry to grotesque screw-pine tree, shedding strange witch-lights over masses of blossoms, tropical and semi-tropical. Through which the fine-spun spray of fountains drifted, and the great mousy dusk-moths darted through the bars of light with the ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... about three-quarters of a mile square. The sea wall enclosed it. It was really an enormous basalt-sided open cube, and within it two other open cubes. The enclosure between the first and second wall was stone paved, with here and there a broken pillar and long stone benches. The hibiscus, the aloe tree, and a number of small shrubs had found place, but seemed only to intensify ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... and partly decayed stick of the Hibiscus, about six feet in length, and half as many inches in diameter, with a small, bit of wood not more than a foot long, and scarcely an inch wide, is as invariably to be met with in every house in Typee as a box of lucifer matches in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... drowsily in from the southern sea, the first thing astir in the spectral world of palm and villa. Warm and deliciously fragrant, it swept the stiff wet Bermuda grass upon the lawn of the Sherrill villa at Palm Beach, rustled the crimson hedge of hibiscus, caught the subtle perfume of jasmine and oleander and swept on to a purple-flowered vine on the white walls of the villa, a fuller, richer thing for the ghost-scent of ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... haste is always forced to spend the night on the way by the abundance of food you place before him." The Bayeiye live much on fish, which is quite an abomination to the Bechuanas of the south; and they catch them in large numbers by means of nets made of the fine, strong fibres of the hibiscus, which grows abundantly in all moist places. Their float-ropes are made of the ife, or, as it is now called, the 'Sanseviere Angolensis', a flag-looking plant, having a very strong fibre, that abounds from Kolobeng ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... from which the perfume frangipani is extracted. This flower is known in the Philippines as calachuchi. There were also some of the yellow, bell-shaped flowers called "campanilo," and a variety of the hibiscus which we learned to call "coral hibiscus," but which in the Philippines is known as ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... mahogany tables, dark with time, and walls adorned with good engravings), with its floor freshly scoured and sanded, while a simple deal stand in the centre bore a vase filled with the rarest and most exquisite wild-flowers I had ever seen (from the gorgeous amaryllis and hibiscus of these regions, down to wax-like blossoms of fragile delicacy and beauty, whose very names I knew not), and its many small diamond-paned casement-windows, all neatly curtained with coarse white muslin bordered with blue, time ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... embowered. The season seems to have been too damp for the night-jars, though quite to the taste of all species of pigeons. In the course of a few minutes the voice of the timid, tremulous, barred-shouldered dove came from among the yellow-flowered hibiscus of the beach, while the pheasant-tailed pigeon sounded its rich, dual note, the red-crowned fruit pigeon tolled its mournful chime, and the guttural of the magnificent fruit pigeon—often heard, but seldom seen—came ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... walk from the landing to the palace gate was strewn with hibiscus and alamander and yellow convolvulus flowers, and bordered with ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... to love, the first, so it seems to me, is that what one gives should be one's best—the very blossom of one's soul. It may have the hot luxuriance of the hibiscus, or the flame of the wild azalea in the woods, or no more than the mildly scented, flowerless bloom of the elm or the linden that falls like manna in the roadway. Each has its beauties and its limitations; but it is worth noticing that each serves its purpose in ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... trees. No grass grew in the garden, and the flowers were not planted in beds or borders. Plants and trees sprang out of the sand, and such flowers as there were—roses, and pomegranate blossoms, hibiscus, and passion flowers—climbed, and rambled, and pushed, and hung in heavy drapery, as best they could without attention or guidance. But one of the principal paths led to a kind of arbour, or temple, ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... valley, with the turbaned women moving among the cane, then the long white road with its splendid setting of royal palms, winding past a hill with groves of palms, marble fountains and statues, terraces covered with hibiscus and orchid, and another Great House on its summit. Far to the right, through an opening in the hills, was a glimpse ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... villages. One would have thought that it would be the reverse, and that the coast districts would have made it their principal business. The trade being confined to the interior, is probably occasioned by its proximity to the raw material which abounds in the bush, viz. the bark of the hibiscus, already referred to in describing ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... principle being that he was still regarded as one of the household. I forgot to say that our black boy did not turn up when the feast was ready. Off went the two cooks, found him, decorated him with huge red hibiscus flowers - he was in a very dirty under shirt - brought him back between them like a reluctant maid, and, thrust him into a place between Faauma and Elena, where he was petted and ministered to. When his turn ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Meredith's career, Panchpokhur had been one of his own appointments, and every corner of the dwelling and its grounds was familiar to him: the tall goldmohur trees beside the gate, the range of out-offices and stabling, the high, flowering hedge of hibiscus, the primitive well by the palm tree, with its screeching pulley. Gazing from the verandah he could almost imagine himself a bachelor again in the first flush of an opening career, keen and interested. The low verandah was the same on which he was wont to sleep on hot ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... grass, which covered the face of the island, was more than six feet high, and completely concealed us from each other as we walked to the summit of the hill, the sides of which were very thickly wooded. Upon the edge of the beach, the pandanus, the hibiscus, and a variety of other tropical trees and shrubs were growing, and the sand was variegated with the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... were cut, the leaves stripped off; it was shaped, stronger in the middle, more slender at the extremities, and nothing remained to be done but to find a plant fit to make the bow-string. This was the "hibiscus heterophyllus," which furnishes fibers of such remarkable tenacity that they have been compared to the tendons of animals. Pencroft thus obtained bows of tolerable strength, for which he only wanted ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... on a glorious morning, January first. On the river bank some trees, which did not appear to me to be indigenous, were covered with lovely flowers resembling hibiscus, some scarlet, some yellow. I had my men gather a small bunch, which for several hours proved attractive in the prosaic Malay prahu. The equatorial regions have not the abundance of beautiful flowers that is credited to ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... flowers and those most easily procured make the best models. The carnation, the morning-glory, and the rarer blossoms of the hibiscus are well adapted to the work, also the daffodil and ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... and scatter the flowers, Jasmine, hibiscus, vermilion and white, This is the day, and the Hour of Hours, Bring forth the Bride for her Lover's delight. Maidens no more as a maiden shall claim her, Near, in his Mystery, draweth Desire. Who, if she waver ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... gardens seem overgrown with stephanotis, mauve and purple passion-flowers, and all kinds of rare creepers, the purple and white hibiscus shoots up some fourteen to sixteen feet in height; bananas, full of fruit and flower, strelitzias, heliotrope, geraniums, and pelargoniums, bloom all around in large shrubs, mixed with palms and mimosas of every variety; and the whole formed such an enchanting ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... unlighted, empty- bowled, short-stemmed clay pipe upside-down between his toothless gums; and, in the stern, as coxswain, the dandy, all nakedness of blackness, all whiteness of decoration, save for the pig's tail in one ear and the scarlet hibiscus that still flamed over the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... idea. "And the curious thing is that we are all aristocrats who belong to it. Not the vulgar kind, you understand—but no, you don't understand. You'll have to take my word for it." Miss Howe's eyes sought a red hibiscus flower that looked in at the window half drowned in sunlight, and the smile in them deepened. The flower admitted so naively that it had no business to ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... found that he could fell the trees with his sharp hatchet quickly and easily. Four posts, with a crotch in the top of each, were set in the ground, forming the corners of the house. The frame was secured with nails and with ropes. The sides and the roof were then covered with the hibiscus from the grove. Noddy worked like a hero at his task, and Mollie watched him with the most intense interest; for he would not permit her to perform any ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... leaves of the ti plant; a band of pearl-shell ornaments encircled his forehead, and his long, black hair, perfumed with scented oil, was twisted up in a high spiral knob, and ornamented with scarlet hibiscus flowers. Across one broad shoulder there hung a small, snowy-white poncho or cape, made of fine tappa cloth, and round his wrists and ankles were circlets of pearl shell, enclosed in a netting of black coir cinnet. On each leg there was tattooed, in bright blue, a coco-nut tree, its roots ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... another with proud lilies, white, orange, and purple; and another with a flowering pomegranate in the centre, while the gigantic white and blue convolvulus coveted the soil all around, mixing with the bright green leaves and crimson blossoms of the hibiscus. No one seemed to be abroad, to enjoy the garden during this the freshest hour of the day; no one but the old black gardener, Raphael, whose cracked voice might be heard at intervals from the depths of the shrubbery in the opposite corner, singing snatches of the hymns which the sisters ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... they are human beings. Then break the ti-leaves off and look towards the direction of the oven, and say: "O hosts of gods! go to-night, and to-morrow you and I shall go." Then wrap the ti-leaves up in han (Hibiscus) leaves, and put them to sleep in the marae, where they must remain until morning, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... the garden at the moment of writing is rejoicing in over a hundred lilies, brilliant yellow and flame colour, each head with its many flowers rising separate and radiant in the sunshine. Then we have oleanders, crimson and pink and white, and little young hibiscus trees, crimson and rose and cream. The arches in the new nursery garden are covered with the lilac of morning-glory; and the Prayer-room in the middle of the garden is a mass of violet passion-flower, the pretty pink antigone, and starry jessamine. The very hedges at this season are ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... trees, and at times the sugar-cane. Their habitations are of an oval shape, often fifty or sixty feet long, and twenty wide. They are formed of bamboos, planted about an inch apart in the ground. At the top of each wall thus formed, a piece of the hibiscus, a strong and light wood, is lashed with plaited rope. From the top of the four walls the rafters rise and meet in a ridge, those from the ends sloping like those from the sides. The rafters, which touch each other, are covered with small mats of the pandanus leaf, which, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... but the lofty trees, overshadowing the road, defended the pedestrian from the effects of a fervent sun, rendering the walk under their umbrageous covering cool and pleasant. The gay flowers of the hibiscus tiliaceus, as well as the splendid huth or Barringtonia speciosa, covered with its beautiful flowers, the petals of which are white, and the edges of the stamina delicately tinged with pink, give to the trees when in full bloom a magnificent appearance; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... refreshment of the ghost. Then the melancholy notes of a horn are heard in the distance, at the sound of which all the women rush away. Soon the horn-blower appears, paints the corpse white and red, crowns it with great red hibiscus roses, then blows his horn, and vanishes.[387] He is a member of a secret society, called Asa, which has its lodge standing alone in the forest. Only men belong to the society; women and children are excluded from it and look upon it with fear and awe. If any one ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... by diamond buttons, and large diamonds sparkled in her little brown ears; as for Ma Chit, she was adorned with the national gold necklace, or dalizan. In her sleek, black hair were artfully arranged sprigs of scarlet hibiscus, and between her tiny hands, glittering with rings, and uplifted palm to palm, she held a beautiful flower, which, when her devotions were accomplished, she laid upon the shrine with an undulating movement ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker |
