Ephemeral: Tropical Style

I never intended to join the 'ephemeral' craze at Garden Walk Garden Talk as Word for Wednesday. I just arrived in the city last night, Wednesday night, which means I am already late for W4W. Yes, I just let it go last night to rest. I was on the road for almost 6 hours because our bus broke the airconditioning unit and we had to wait for the next bus of the same company. To add more constraint to that is the long queue of vehicles going to the city, after a long weekend to celebrate All Saints' Day/All Souls' Day. This is a traditional cultural happening here in the country, to visit the tombs of departed relatives on November 1 or 2. Most city dwellers go home to their  provinces for this yearly event, which also serve not only to visit tombs of dead relatives but also reunion with the living.

I have visited and commented on some links, and I can't seem to let it pass even if late, it is already Thursday now. The word 'Ephemeral' has now been used widely: noun or adjective, to denote short or fleeting existence, transience. But short existence is very arbitrary. I am familiar with it in Botany, to denote those plants which stay dormant underground and suddenly finish its growth and reproduction when conditions arise. Such conditions are not constant, and ephemeral plants seem to adapt to these fleeting moments. So there are spring ephemerals, desert ephemerals, and weed ephemerals. This botanical term exists only in temperate climates. Dictionaries provided wide ranges of definitions, maybe a good  site for plants is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeral_plant, or here for wider use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeral.

We don't have ephemeral plants because we don't have extreme seasons as you have. But we have a lot of plants which grow and reproduce only during the wet season and lay dormant during the rest of the year. However, the definition has transcended to mean a lot of things, transitory, and it is already accepted even to describe art, or human existence, depending on the time frame. So, I might as well use it with our conditions. For our sake, I will call it wet season ephemerals or "wet tropics ephemerals". I hope no authority on 'ephemerals' will sue me for using it very colloquially, for our own tropical use. They are normally called wet season plants, but to be more internationally sounding (and for W4W), I will call them such. What do you think? (These are all taken in our property).

 The Bulbs

blood lily

amaryllis

The Weeds

Mimosa

The Rhizomes

taro

Caladium

Caladium

The Moss

The Fungus

The dew and grass