Mango blooms

This year many of the mango trees around here were in bloom.  There is a venerable giant in the grounds of the playschool I work at, and a beautiful spreading mango tree too.  Then the mango trees in the grounds around my house too were in bloom, more than in the last couple of years.

For the last 15 years or so, many of the mango trees in our grounds were covered by a parasitic mistletoe kind of plant.  When branches of the tree, which had got squeezed by the parasite, were cut off, the tree died out after a bit.  Even repeated peeling off of the mistletoe did not seem to help.  The presence of the parasite kept the trees from flowering This year, I do not see the mistletoe on the trees, hence the mango blooms.  Since it has been so long since the mango trees bloomed, I had forgotten the scent.

The scent of the mango flowers is intoxicating;, sweet, slightly spicy, with the sourness of the raw mango.  At first, when I caught the heady scent, I wasn't sure which tree had bloomed.  Then when the hint of sourness came along too, as the flowers matured, I realised it was the scent of mango flowers.  Now, most of them are no longer visible.  Hopefully, there will be mangoes though, later on.