Heliconiaceae

Heliconia Family

Genus: Heliconia with numerous species, hybrids, and cultivars

hell-ah-CONE-ee-ah

Named for Mount Helicon, home of the Muses (BA1) (Many Heliconias come from montane habitats.)

By: Lisa Cushing

Most information from BER and SMI (and from PF)

A single-genus family of some 200 or more species, the vast majority from the American Tropics. None native to Florida.  Species highly hybridized, with over 200 named species, hybrids, and cultivars in the trade.  Heliconias belong to the order Zingiberales along with bananas, gingers, cannas, birds of paradise, and marantas.  Heliconias are large rhizomatous herbs with petiolate leaves, usually with colorful bracts, flowers bilaterally symmetrical having 3 sepals and 3 petals, with all the floral parts fused marginally except for one free sepal.  Stamens 5 plus a small staminide. Ovary inferior, 3-chambered ,with one ovule per chamber.  Fruits small drupes.

Although Heliconias tend to be highly diverse “collectors items,” the main selections marketed in South Florida are comparatively small plants  that bear their flowers on slender wands above the foliage, most of them derived from Heliconia psittacorum.  ‘Andromeda’, named for Andromeda Gardens in Barbados, has flame-colored mixed red and orange flowers and bracts.   ‘Choconiana’ has orange flowers and bracts.  ‘Lady Di’ has red bracts and pale yellow flowers. The psittacorum hybrid ‘Golden Torch’ has canary yellow flowers and bracts.

The Lobster Claw Heliconias with large dangling red-yellow inflorescences are Heliconia rostrata.

Many large selections with upright inflorescences shorter than the leaves are any of many hybrid cultivars of the Caribbean species H. bihai and H. caribaea. These usually have fundamentally reddish bracts.

Persons interested in details on heliconias are refered to BER.

Plants listed in the manual include:

Heliconia sp.