A personal selection of photographs with their stories.
343: Heliconia plant
Heliconia plants are quite common in Brazil, especially in ornamental gardens and urban parks. This is how I met this heliconia plant at the Parque Municipal (urban park) in Belo Horizonte. The plant is family of the banana, and is named after the Helicon mountain (where the muses lived) in Greek mythology. The large, yellow and red, hanging bracts hide the flowers, which are very popular among the hummingbirds. Because of the difficult accessibility of the flowers, the plant is very dependent on these hummingbirds for the pollination. The plant also stores water and is loved in this way by a number of insects, including mosquitoes. As the Helicon mountain offered much inspiration to poets, this colorful heliconia plant offered me inspiration for this photo.
© Adriano Antoine Robbesom 2011, 2017
Adriano Antoine 