Heliconias of South America

 

 

The Heliconiaceae family contains about 200 species of perennial plants mostly found in the tropical forests of South America; a few species are native to islands in the Western Pacific. Depending on species, heliconias range from .5 to 4.5 meters in height. The plant is commonly referred to as lobster-claws or parrot-beaks; the waxy bracts of Heliconia plants resemble a lobster’s claw or a parrot’s beak. The colorful and uniquely shaped flowers are green, orange, red, or yellow and produce ample amounts of nectar to attract humming birds as their primary pollinators. The mature fruit of a heliconia plant is blue in color and covered with a fleshy outer layer; birds serve as the most important distributer of these seeds. The illustrations above are ,from left to right, Heliconia bihai of Northern Brazil, Heliconia dasyantha of Suriname, and Heliconia villosa of Venezuela.

Banana Plant - Papua New Guinea

There are 70 species in the genus Musa; these are the plants producing bananas and plantains. Though it is assumed bananas grow on trees, the “trunk” is made up of tightly compressed leaf stalks strong enough to support the weight of the fruit clusters as they mature and ripen. Bananas are the fruit of giant herb plants. The farmers of Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea were the first to cultivate the banana. The largest producer of bananas is India; the biggest exporter is Ecuador.

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New Guinea, an island shared by Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, is the largest tropical island in the world and the highest in average elevation. This allows for an incredible diversity of fauna and flora. In area, the island of New Guinea comprises less than .05% of the earth’s total surface area, but contains an astonishing 8% of the world’s known vertebrate; over 4,500 species. New Guinea is known for its wide variety of orchids and contains almost 3,000 species representing 3/4’s of the world’s total.