Gumamela (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis Linn)
Gumamela is a shrub that grows from one meter up to 4 meters high. Gumamela is also known as: Hibiscus, China Rose and Shoeflower. In the Philippines, gumamela is cultivated as an ornamental plant. The gumamela flower comes in many colors: red, yellow, orange, white, purple, pink and other color combinations.
Gumamela leaves, usually blended with Rose Hip has long been used in the Middle East and Okinawa as herbal tea. Today, the use of gumamela tea is gaining worldwide popularity - including Asia. Gumamela (Hibiscus) is associated with longevity.
Color combination of Gumamela Flowers can be attained by GRAFTING (plants).
Grafting is defined as a method of asexual plant propagation widely used in agriculture and horticulture where the tissues of one plant are encouraged to fuse with those of another. It is most commonly used for the propagation of trees and shrubs grown commercially.
In most cases, one plant is selected for its roots, and this is called the stock or rootstock. The other plant is selected for its stems, leaves, flowers, or fruits and is called the scion. The scion contains the desired genes to be duplicated in future production by the stock/scion plant.
In stem grafting, a common grafting method, a shoot of a selected, desired plant cultivar is grafted onto the stock of another type. In another common form called budding, a dormant side bud is grafted on the stem of another stock plant, and when it has fused successfully, it is encouraged to grow by cutting out the stem above the new bud.
For successful grafting to take place, the vascular cambium tissues of the stock and scion plants must be placed in contact with each other. Both tissues must be kept alive until the graft has taken, usually a period of a few weeks. Successful grafting only requires that a vascular connection takes place between the two tissues. A physical weak point often still occurs at the graft, because the structural tissue of the two distinct plants, such as wood may not fuse.
WHY GRAFT GUMAMELA???
Gumamela is a good flowering plant to graft for it has benefits to the human race.
Here are some benefits of gumamela:
1. Gumamela as a medicinal shrub...
Serving of petals of 5 to 10 flowers of hibiscus relieves stomach ulcer, white discharge, hair falling, baldness.Petals of 100 hibiscus may be mixed with 400ml of gingiley oil in a container and kept in sunlight for 10 days. The mixture should be stirred daily in the morning and evening. Then to be filtered and added with equal amount of coconut oil. This mixture may applied daily on the scalp to prevent early greying of hair, hair falling, baldness etc.
It is also that Hibiscus, or locally known as gumamela, is a flowering plant, a shrub in nature. The flowers and leaves are the ones used for medicinal purposes.
Teas made from hibiscus flowers and, occasionally, leaves are a very common beverage in tropical regions where they grow. The cool, astringent, acidic flavor is widely recognized and has made it a staple of “zinger” type teas in the United States. All parts of hibiscus plants are used traditionally. Due to their soothing and astringent properties, the flowers and leaves have been traditionally used to treat conditions such as cancer and gallbladder attacks, to lower blood pressure, to relieve dry coughs, and topically to treat skin afflictions.
It has been found out that the flowers of hibiscus contain substantial quantities of flavonoids which are associated with antioxidant, fever-reducing (antipyretic), pain-relieving (analgesic), and spasm-inhibiting (spasmolytic) activities.
2. Gumamela as a beautiful, natural decoration...
The gumamela flower comes in many colors: the most common is red, pink, white, yellow, orange, purple and other color combination. Because of its color variants and naturality that epitomizes the true beauty of nature, people would have this species of flowers in their to have them as decoration.
There are many other benefits of having gumamela in their lives... That is the reason why we should take care of gumamela and have them upgraded through grafting. When I say upgrading gumamela, it means that we graft them because when we graft - we will be able to create new variants of color, new type of fgumamela and a hybrid one.
Grafting a gumamela is actually cheap. All you need is a blade, plastic, and a gumamela plant.
Well, that's all for now. My next post will be on the steps of grafting a gumamela.
See yah!!!
Signing OFF...
