Strelitzia nicolai

Strelitzia nicolai, commonly the Natal wild banana and several other names including giant bird-of-paradise flower, is a coastal tree that forms clumps from 3 m to 12 m tall (SA Tree List No. 34).

The botanical name has illustrious connotations: The nicolai being in honour of Czar Nicholas of Russia, presumably Nicholas the Second who died on 17 July 1918 in the Revolution. Queen Charlotte of England, wife of George III, who came from the German aristocratic house of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, is honoured in the generic name.  European royal families and, in fact the people on earth, are interrelated in ways as complex as are the plants that grow upon it.

S. nicolai under any name is a striking plant. It is worthy of its regal names, as well as of a position of honour in bigger gardens, especially along the southern and eastern coasts of South Africa.

The species distribution is in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, as well as further north in southern Africa.

The habitat is coastal dunes and coastal and inland evergreen forests. The species is not considered to be threatened in its habitat early in the twenty first century (Coates Palgrave, 2002; Van Wyk and Van Wyk, 1997; Pooley, 1993; iNaturalist; www.plantzafrica.com; http://redlist.sanbi.org).