Plants of South Eastern New South Wales
Strelitzia nicolai
Common name
Bird of Paradise Tree, Natal Wild Banana
Family
Strelitziaceae
Where found
Garden escape. Sydney area.
Notes
Introduced tree-like plant to 12 m tall, multi-stemmed, forming dense clumps. Leaves opposite each other, making a palm-like crown, to 2 m long, entire or broken into ribbons by the wind, grey-green and shining. Flowers with 3 white petal-like sepals and 3 blue to bluish purple petals, 2 petals joined together to form an arrow-like structure with a central channel containing the stamens and style, the third (uppermost) much smaller. Flowers to 500 mm long. Flowers emerge one at a time from the stiff purplish to dark blue boat-shaped spathe. Seeds black, with a bright orange woolly aril attached.
PlantNET description: http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Strelitzia~nicolai (accessed 30 January 2021)
SANBI description: http://pza.sanbi.org/strelitzia-nicolai (accessed 30 January 2021)
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