Stars in a Crown

India · nature

A cluster of red ixora — small four-petalled stars stacked together into a crown of flowers. A common garden plant doing something quietly geometric.

Ixora coccinea — sometimes called flame-of-the-woods — is one of the most common ornamental plants in Indian gardens, and one of the most easily overlooked. The bush itself is unremarkable: glossy oval leaves, a vaguely shrubby habit, no particular fragrance. But the flowers, when you look at them at close range, are a small wonder. Each one is a four-petalled star perhaps a centimetre across, and the bush produces them in tight domes of fifty or sixty at a time, every petal more or less the same scarlet red.

I shot this one from straight on, with the light coming from the side, so every individual flower threw a small shadow on the cluster beneath. The geometry takes over from there. It is the same star repeated again and again, with just enough variation in angle and size to keep the cluster from being a wallpaper. Ixora is hardy enough that it shows up in temple plantings, hospital courtyards, hotel driveways. Most days nobody looks at it. On the day you do, it pays attention back.

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