I photographed the Coleus up close today. The coleus has always been a favourite of my mother and I. My mother has propagated several varieties of coleus at a time around our house and in all the food gardens where I grew up. We used coleus for singsing (traditional dancing).

The flower is also called the painted nettle and poor man’s croton. They grow fast and survive better is partial shade. I am fascinated by the way nature combines the colours in coleus.

There are so many different colour combinations on this flower and the colours are surprisingly complementary. For example, the lime green and the pink in the pictured leaf above and the green and purple in the young leaf pictured below.

I love coleus especially because I can get natural dyes from some of the varieties for my art. See previous post. 

Even when the leaves get a little older in this variety, the orange is added to the green on the picture below. Again, another complimentary colour to what the plant already has. It is almost as if to say that the Coleus knows how to dress – she is very fashionable. She does ‘read’ the colour chart very well.

This pictures were taken with a Nikon D5200