Frangipani

Red frangipani is a deciduous shrub or small tree of the dogbane family, two to eight metres tall, with a thick, succulent trunk and blunt, sausage-like branches under thin grey bark; a broken branch bleeds white latex. Its large leaves cluster at the branch tips, and through the summer the ends of the branches carry five-petalled flowers, most often pink but ranging to white, with yellow towards the centre. They are strongly scented in the morning and evening, which draws the hawkmoths that pollinate them, though they hold almost no nectar. The species is native from Baja California and Mexico through Central America to Colombia and Venezuela. Spanish galleons carried it to the Philippines in the 1560s, from where it spread across Asia, and it reached the Pacific Islands late in the nineteenth century; there its blossoms are threaded into leis, and in Hawaii it is called melia. The English name recalls an Italian noble family, one of whom made a perfume with its scent, and the genus honours the French botanist Charles Plumier. It is the national flower of Nicaragua and of Laos, it is planted beside temples and in cemeteries, and its link with graves earned it a Malay name meaning grave flower. In magic Cunningham gives it to love: its flowers are used in love spells.