I came across for the first time the Panama rose (Rondeletia leucophylla) when I visited the ‘Girl on the Swing’ statue at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It is one of the flowering shrubs that were grown as part of the border that went around the statue. Gives a very ‘meadowy’ feel to the area.
It is a fragrant flower whose perfume gets stronger after dusk. But I wasn’t attracted to it due to that. In fact, I did not know that it was a fragrant flower until I researched on it further. Instead, I like the pink flowers. Their texture sort of gave me the impression that they were made from clay.
The Panama Rose is a member of Rubiaceae to which the common Ixora is also a part of it. The plant is named after Guillaume Rondelet, a French natural historian, physician and botanist.
I just bought a pot of it from World Farm yesterday. 
