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Orlando, FL.
-----Original Message-----
Marak
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 11:37 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list AROID-L
Subject: Strelitzia
This has been niggling at me all day, so I dug among a few books this
evening. As usual, there is some disagreement on naming, and most of my
references are probably out of date anyway.
Graf's Exotica, series 3 9th edition, has pictures on pp. 1182-1183 of
(among other things) S. reginae, S. parvifolia, and S. parvifolia juncea.
(Hortus III seems to consider them all forms of S. reginae.)
Graf's descriptions in the back perhaps shed a little light:
S. reginae: "... trunkless, compact, clustering ... to 5 ft high, with
stiff-leather, concave, oblong, bluish-gray leaves with pale or red
midrib ..."
S. parvifolia: "... the Small-leaved Bird-of-paradies; about 4 ft. high,
very similar to S. reginae ... recognized by its leaves which are reduced
to very small, spoon-shaped, thin blades at the tips of tall stiff,
reed-like stalks; ..."
S. parvifolia juncea:"... the Rush-like strelitzia, from the Port
Elizabeth area; very curious form which I was amazed to find because it
has no leaves at all; just a dense cluster 4-5 ft. high, of spiky tufts of
cylindrical, fleshy but rigid, reed-like grayish stems tapering to a
needle-point; ..."
Whether any of these is the "dwarf" variety I don't know, but the last of
the three is the one I for which I searched a bit. I'd still like to try
it, and I see now that an Internet search turns up several seed sources,
so maybe I'll get around to it this time.
Steve
-- Steve Marak
-- samarak@arachne.uark.edu
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