Flowering palm trees attract tourists at Peradeniya Botanical Gardens in Kandy in Sri Lanka (Text and pix. by; Harsha Udayakantha Peiris)

The two palm trees in their full bloom at the Peradeniya Botanical Garden in Kandy, have become a reason to attract more and more tourists to the garden these days. Both local and specially the foreign tourists who amaze to see these rarely seen palm flowers are seemed to make Peradeniya Botanical Garden a definite destination, over the hearing of the two palm trees in their full bloom.
"It’s amazing. I have heard that a palm tree does not flower for maybe 100 years and when it’s like this it can be mistaken for other types of palms as well. I took several pictures so that I can show it as a great token of my visit to the Botanical Gardens in Kandy”, said a young student from Belgium who had been visiting the Peradeniya Botanical Garden during her mid term university vacation.
The palm flower grows out of the top of the tree and starts to spread once the tree reaches its complete maturity. The branches of this shoot then become covered in hundreds of tiny white flowers that ooze with nectar, attracting insects and birds. The effort of flowering and fruiting depletes the tree so much that within a few months it collapses and dies.