Most people call this frangipani. Botanists call it plumeria. Among the Tagalog-speaking Filipinos, we call it kalachuchi. I realize I’m biased but I do prefer our name for it because the word sort of tickles your tongue and sounds playful and more melodious.

We had a couple of kalachuchi trees in front of our house where I grew up. I’d wear the flowers in my hair and pretend to be a Greek goddess like Artemis. In the summers, some ladies toting big sakos, or cloth bags, would come by and ask if they could pick the kalachuchi flowers from our trees. I wouldn’t want them to but my grandmother would let them. She said these women string the blooms to create funeral wreaths and sell them for a living. And true enough, whenever we’d pass Funeraria Paz on Misericordia St. in Manila on our way to the family doctor, I would not only see the wreaths made with kalachuchis, I could smell them! Although I’ve always loved the sweet heady fragrance of kalachuchi, to this day it reminds me of funeral homes, even though they are rarely used that way nowadays.