The Story Of My "tree" Musketeers - The Impermanence of nature's beauty : An aging-rebirth process

The "red corn" would start aging when its colour start fading, and gradually turning yellowy-red, starting from the edges of its "scales" & ultimately turning into a dry, brownish scaly pulp as shown in the photograph below:

I could feel a pang of deep regret each time when I spotted any one of these "red corns" maturing & bidding me farewell.

However, such is life where nothing is permanently beautiful, new & immortalised. Through gardening, I couldn't help but recognise the blatant truth that the plant has already started to age the minute it springs up from the soil or from the stems as a new shoot. And of course, moves on closer to the end of its growth cycle day by day.

The end of this growth cycle is always greeted by the birth of its "babies", and I couldn't deny the fact that we humans share much parallels in our growth cycle with that of mother nature.

I was fascinated by a huge, fat "baby" sprouting out from an existing stem where a giantic "flower head" (of the red corn) is still surviving at:

However, the arrival of this "baby" would also imply the soon-to-be demise of the existing "adult" even though it hasn't withered yet.

I came to observe that its fresh chilli-red tone has turned into a darkish sort of brick red, which would soon be aging into a yellowy-red tone.

The photograph below shows how much the stem-bound "baby" has grown after a period of just 2 weeks.



If you are lucky enough, you might see the aging "red corn" bursting into an array of "scaly" splendour as shown in the photographs below:

However, this phenomenon has only occured to my plants on & off. I observed that it doesn't happen all the time becox quite a number of these "Red corns" would jux get dehydrated into a dry, brown scaly pulp.

Out of curiousity, I pried open the white sacs which resembled $ bags to find tiny black seeds hidden in white mesh-like fibre.

After leaving these tiny black seeds in the open for a few days to dry it up, I wasted no time in throwing them into the soil to see if it'll germinate & grow into a plant.

2 weeks to as many as 3 months flew by & finally, I spotted these tiny green sprouts growing out from the soil as shown in the photograph below:

However, I did observe that these "sprouts" don't seemed to grow beyond this stage. They'll normally shrivel & die off when the leaves & stems turn brown.

The final stage of "flower head" withering into a brown, scaly pulp & the entire stem is to be pruned should there be no other new shoots growing from it as shown in the photograph below: