Strelitzias of the World

It’s a must for all fans of environmental exploration, plant discoveries and historical adventures. From Amazonian jungles to royal palaces, from scientific detective work to painstaking artistry, it tells the risky and intriguing international saga of the spectacular plant family of strelitzias. Strelitzias are ranked one of the world’s five most beautiful flowers and are grown and sold in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australasia Most of the strelitzia family come from southern Africa but they have relatives in Madagascar and South America’s remote Amazon region These spectacular plants have been named after a British queen (Strelitzia reginae), a Russian prince (Strelitzia nicolai) and a hero of South Africa’s freedom struggle (Mandela’s gold) Strelitzias are a small family of plants with a very long ancestry, linking back several hundred million years to the ancient supercontinents of Gondwanaland and Pangaea The strelitzia is the provincial emblem of KwaZulu-Natal Strelitzias of the World tells how adventurous plant collectors tackled pirates, deathly disease and near-impenetrable jungle. Painstaking botanists named the plants for science – often crossing swords with colleagues in the process as professional rivalries took hold. Strelitzias of the World also tells how the species have been of use both to people, yesterday and today, and how wild animals consume and use them to survive and thrive.