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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the January 11, 2019 Newsletter with notes from an October, 2018 camping trip to Chiapas, the southernmost state of MÉXICO
LOBSTER CLAW
During my camping trip to Chiapas, on October 2, 2018, just below my tent in Maya Bell Campground in Palenque National Park, a handsome cluster of heliconias, genus Heliconia, were in flower, shown below:
You might guess from the big, glossy leaves that heliconias are closely related to the Banana Family. Most of my life, they've been assigned to that family, but now genetic analysis indicates that they're so unique that they deserve to be assigned to their own family, the Heliconia Family, the Heliconiaceae. Heliconia flowers, like those of the banana, arise from inside large, leathery, often colorful, scoop-like bracts stacked above one another in a flowering structure, like the levels of a pagoda, as shown below:
This particular species is unusual in that its flower stalk hangs downward. Normally heliconia bracts are directed skyward, and water accumulates in them, often forming drinking spots for birds and other wildlife. Beside my hut at Chichén Itzá there was a more typical heliconia producing upright flowering structures, which you might like to compare with the present one.
Below, a downward-directed bract of the Chiapas species is shown closer up:
There you see one of several yellowish flowers emerging from the bract. The flowers' blossoming time is staggered so that only one flower in the bract is receptive at a time.
This is HELICONIA ROSTRATA, native from Costa Rica south to Peru and Bolivia, but planted in the tropics worldwide because of its beauty and robust growth in gardens. Among its several English names are Lobster Claw, Hanging Heliconia and False Bird of Paradise.
Lobster Claw's rhizome has been used medicinally to treat intestinal pain, jaundice and for treating high blood pressure.