Heliconia

This attractive flowering plant is commonly called as Lobster-Claw, Wild Plantain and False Bird-of-Paradise, is a beautiful flower with multi-color bracts and varied flower structure. It represents a genus Heliconia of flowering plants from the family Heliconiacea. 

Its species grow in the tropical areas on the United States and the Pacific Ocean islands west to Indonesia.
 
The plant can grow up to 3-10 feet high. Heliconia blooms represent modified leaves and bracts. Its stems are pendulous. Heliconia bears its blooms on long, erect or drooping panicles. They are composed by colorful waxy bracts, with tiny blossoms inside the bracts coming in orange, purple, red, yellowish, pinkish, green or other color varieties.

Heliconia plants are notable by their banana-resembling leaves which may be big or thin. Some heliconia flowers drop down from the major stem; that is why they have the name of hanging heliconia.

Heliconias are highly appreciated for being perfect landscape and gardening plants.

Heliconia vellerigera

Under GFDL by Kurt Stueber

Heliconia psittacorum

By Hans Hillewaert - Under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5

Heliconia mariae in Hawaii

Kowloonese - Under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2