luc vleeracker

Hi Joe ,
I have about 30 heliconia varieties and in the wintermonths at night the temperature drops to about 50 F or 10 celsius even had nights at 7 celsius , none of mine have died so far .
Then again better safe than sorry!

Luc
Mexico

JoeS475

Thanks Luc,

Maybe I will bring it in, I'd hate to lose it!

~Joe

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mnorell

Joe--

I would take it in. Unless you're going to heat up rapidly tomorrow morning, it's best not to shock these plants, you may affect flower development, even though the plant will probably be okay. Psittacorums are extremely intolerant of chill, more so than many other types. If it's easy to drag it in, why not?

Steve L

Michael,

I've never tried Aurantiaca nor any of the other species you mention in your last post. I've not seen any heliconia throw a bloom with no leaves on the stalk. I've had Rostrata coming out of winter not put a leaf out on a ratty looking stalk for months and then all of a sudden start growing and flower. Is this what you mean? In that case, I fought the temptation to whack it down just to find out what would happen; in this case it began growing again but not all of the stalks did that and I eventually had to cut down the remaining ugly stalks because they had died.

I don't know what to tell you about your Coccinea. This banana is a very strong grower for me. I did start out with a large 5 gallon pot of it though and maybe this helped. Stokes tropicals sells this banana but I doubt they could ship such a large plant. My good fortune is that they are only an hour away and I can go over there myself and pick out my plants and haul them back to Lake Charles. They have been long time friends of mine.

Steve

mnorell

Steve—

The post I read indicated that on some of those seasonal varieties they can literally push a flower at the seasonal trigger-time no matter what. I guess the idea is that the growth-bud has initiated below-ground just prior to flowering time. When the plant gives the go-ahead to flower, it just flowers and pays no attention to whether there are no leaves or ten leaves! Also, one grower in Puerto Rico told me that in his experience if foliage is cut back severely, even if a stalk is cut down to the ground, if an inflorescence has been initiated below-ground it will generally still push out, but it may be a dwarf. (But of course cutting a stalk down in tropical conditions vs. having one killed back in a freeze or long-term chilly conditions is another thing altogether, and certainly may yield different behaviors… I would think it at least plausible that this could cause shock below soil-level and abort the inflorescence.) Perhaps this is what happened with your rostrata, and it just took a long time to emerge from the top of the stem? I know that in California, on some of the species/varieties I was growing, they were so touchy that sometimes even removing one leaf could cause the whole stem to stop growing. Very strange.

As far as Musa coccinea goes, I do have hope for at least one of my clumps, but I just have wondered about all this fussiness that is bantered about with soil requirements (acid pH, etc.) and that it may require some shade. That’s why I have one in a good amount of shade (but receiving a few hours direct sun) and another in full sun, to compare their rates of growth. Unfortunately I just set out the full-sun specimen six weeks ago, from a good-sized 3-gallon specimen I ordered from Florida, and it’s still recovering a bit from the transplant and new environs. The one in the shadier spot, with peat-moss added, is doing better and looks quite healthy, but it’s still just 4-5 feet tall, with leaf-blades about 2 feet long, and has put out two pups and about 9-10 leaves since spring. I’m assuming I will see a flower by October, as I’ve done leaf-counts on all blooming plants I’ve seen in greenhouses, in Miami, etc. and they seem to uniformly push about ten leaves and then the blossom. This was a decent-sized specimen I ordered from Stokes. I would happily drive to Stokes and pick up larger plants, but it’s 2-1/2 hours from here to New Iberia and they’re not open on weekends. Not easily doable for me during the week.

I’ve searched for fernandezii with no luck on the web, and still can’t even find a photo (and it’s not in the Berry/Kress guide) but am going to try to find that and several others for next year. Also, are you familiar with H. rostrata ‘Ten Day’? On the Plant Group Ltd’s website, they state: “At last we have one that is a good cut and blooms year round.” That year-round statement makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be worth procuring for testing, and whether it’s as hardy as the seasonal rostrata. Also, they mention that x nickeriensis has a “semi-aquatic” habit and that piques my interest in terms of whether it might be more able to fend off problems caused by soggy soil during the cold months.

Steve L

Michael,

A picture of the Fernandezii is in the Spanish version of the Heliconia Identification Guide which was written by John Kress and primarily deals with Heliconia from Columbia. Berry and Kress wrote the English version. Mark Collins who owns Plant Group has Fernandezii but only ships to large nurseries. Most of his heliconia comes from Thailand but he has a distribution center in Hawaii, I believe. Anyway, I originally got mine from Aloha Tropicals several years ago who got it from Mark but they have stopped carrying it. My friend in Culver City, CA is growing it and hopefully, will be able to send me a hunk of the rhizome next spring. They are big clumpers and hard to separate out.

Steve