BLOOMING CHAMPACA

About five years ago, I bought a Bunga Chempaka (Magnolida champaca) plant for the Herb Garden.  Its English names are Champak and Champaca but then here in Malaysia we refer to the flower by its Malay name. Interestingly the plant that I bought bore both yellow and white flowers.  In the first year, the plant bore only a few flowers.  Recently, I noticed that the plant is bearing more flowers.  It could be because I was always pruning the plant and using the leaves for herbal baths. 
The flowers are used for worship at temples or at ones home.  The Indian ladies like to wear them in their hair as an ornament.  One can float the flowers in a bowl of water to scent the room.  The perfume like fragrance of the flowers is really sweet and heady.  
The Champaca flower is used in traditional herbal medicine to cure body odour.  All one needs to do is to get a handful of white champaca flowers with a few sirih leaves, boil them in a pot of water.  One takes a bath with the water when it becomes lukewarm.  
I managed to pluck three Champaca flowers from the plant and placed them in a small pot on my work table in school.  As I am writing this post, the wonderful scent of the flowers fills my room.  Ahhhh!  What wondrous pleasure nature's bounty gives.