Bird of paradise flower

About the plant

Francis Masson, the first collector Kew ever sent abroad, shipped this plant home from the Cape in 1773, and when it flowered in the royal garden Sir Joseph Banks named it for the queen, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the garden's patron. Nothing like it had been seen in Europe: from a clump of leathery leaves like a banana's rises a stem bearing a green boat-shaped bract, and from the bract, one after another over weeks, emerge flowers of three orange sepals and a blue arrow of fused petals, the whole thing looking exactly like the crested head of a bird.

The resemblance is accidental but the design is not. In the Cape the flower is pollinated by sunbirds, which land on the blue arrow to reach the nectar; their weight opens a slit along it and dusts their feet with pollen, which they carry to the next flower. Thornton, who could never resist a royal connection, called it the Queen Plant and gave it one of the grandest plates in The Temple of Flora, the flower blazing against a dark sky, published in 1804. It is now grown in every frost-free garden in the world and is the official flower of Los Angeles.