Saturday, June 12, 2010

Kembang Tahi Kotok - Tagetes, Spp



These beautiful flowers have an unpleasant name here: kembang or bunga tahi kotok (lit. chicken shit flower) because of their pungent scent. Anywhere else it's called marigolds (Mexican, French, or African, depending on the species). It is native to the southwestern United States, Mexico, and the South American regions in general and belongs to the genus of tagetes.

It is said that the pungent smell of this flower can deter some common insect pests. Hence, this kind of flower is often planted together with the main crops in tomato, eggplant, chili pepper, tobacco and potato gardens.

The marigolds grow well here. I took this photo at Cihideung flower village in the north of Bandung.

4 comments:

BlossomFlowerGirl said...

WE have marigolds here too. Lots of them.
Cheers.
Melbourne Daily Photo

Photo Cache said...

I was gonna say they don't smell so good :)

Mahmud Yussop said...

Hi Bro,
Long time no see. Despite its name the flowers are beautiful. We have a similar variety here called "Bunga Tahi Ayam" which are low free flowering shrubs to plant in a tropical garden.
Nice blog template.Salam,dari MOOD.

Anonymous said...

I like this flower very much. It admired me a lot. Thanks for sharing.
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