Bird of Paradise
Strelitzia reginae
A crane's head in orange and blue above broad, paddle-like leaves — it wants all the light you can find it and never a cold night.
- Type
- Flower · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Orange · Blue
- Sunlight
- Bright, direct sun — as much of it as you can give.
- Watering
- Water thoroughly, then let the top 5cm dry out before watering again.
- Feeding
- Feed every two weeks through spring and summer.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- April
- Pruning
- Take off spent flower stalks and dead leaves, and nothing else.
- Mar–Apr Spring Growth
- Apr–Oct Flowering
- Oct–Dec Growing
- Dec–Dec Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 7 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 7 in
- Between rows
- 3 ft 3 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- A fleshy crown with thick perennial roots
- Working depth
- 12 in–3 ft
- Can reach
- 5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 2.5–4 ft across, about 1–1.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 18 in of soil
The crown is the plant’s bank account and it is slow to rebuild, which is why a new planting is left unpicked for a season or two. Plant it at the depth it asks for and no deeper; these rot from being buried far more often than they suffer from being shallow.
Thick fleshy roots that like being crowded: a strelitzia in a tight pot flowers and one given room makes leaves for years. Divide it as seldom as you can bear to.
The habit is Bird of Paradise’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Recorded toxic
Recorded as toxic to cats and dogs by ASPCA.
The ASPCA also files a plain Bird of Paradise entry, and that one is Caesalpinia gilliesii, a different plant sitting right beside this one.
- Scale insects Scale insects on the undersides of the leaves
- Root & crown rot Root rot where drainage is poor
- Leaf splitting in strong wind — cosmetic, and no cause for concern
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Scale insects
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Scale insects
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
Green-leaved flowers, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com