Flora and Fauna of Tahiti and her islands
The wild exuberance of the plant life and its heady perfumes have always charmed visitors and told sailors from afar that the islands were at hand. The painter Matisse once spoke of the intoxicating perfume “which wipes away memories of the past and all fear of the future...”
In
this fertile soil everything grows, changes and produces the most beautiful
tropical specimens.
We could
start with the queen of all Tahitian flowers for its purity and its fragrance:
the “tiare Tahiti”,
a variety of gardenia that graces the hair of the lovely Tahitian women, which
is to be seen in every
garden and which is valued for use in leis and floral head-wear at celebration
time. The flower colors are striking everywhere you go and throughout the year:
blood-red in the clusters of “opuhi” a graphic overlay of bright colors in the
thousands of birds of paradise or heliconias, flowering bougainvillea hedges
with tones ranging from pastel to scarlet purple, and the ubiquitous hibiscus
of a thousand shades...
The
overpowering fragrance of ylang-ylang blends with the subtle scent of the
frangipani or jasmine in the evening air.
The
Marquesans well knew the secret power of scented flowers to charm: they make
aromatic bouquets
and oil their bodies with sandalwood perfumed monoi. The warm temperatures of
South Seas are another attraction of Tahiti and Her Islands. Underwater
fauna
reflects the diversity of the islands and their seabed. The familiar dance of
small shoals of butterfly fish, angel fish or clown fish through the corals,
along with the majestic movements of giant manta rays, are the prelude to other
more scary adventures. Such are the organized dives amongst sharks, and
unforgettable spectacle of shoals of barracuda, and, in the Austral Islands,
encounters with that grandiose and unique creature, the whale.
