Reinwardtia indica (Golden girl)

Always rewarding is to find a shrub that produces showy flowers during the cool winter months. Midday in December or January you may witness as many as two dozen yellow flowers that are open. Each golden-yellow flower, 2" wide, lasts that one day and is described as being fugacious, meaning that the corolla withers and falls off easily. It commemorates Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (1773-1854), a Prussian-born Dutch botanist who held important positions and professorships in The Netherlands but also served as the founder and first director of agriculture of the botanic garden at Bogor (Buitenzorg) in Java, then a Dutch colony.