Greetings from Aruba.
I come to you with a query stemming from my dinner last night at a local restaurant.
There was a highly unusual tropical flower on the center of all the tables in the restaurant and no one could identify it by its English name.
My photos aren’t perfect, but I think they should be sufficient:
http://picasaweb.google.com/dynaprocr/Iphone
Many Thanks.
–xiix–
It’s a Bird Of Paradise flower - strelitzia
Actually, it might be a Heliconia - difficult to tell…
Hmmmm… The red appear to be bracts, arranged in a symetrical spiral, with blue-ish tubular flowers between, so I don’t think Heliconia.
It looks like a flower spike from a bromeliad-- perhaps Tillandsia or maybe a Billbergia…
(Wiki picture, perhaps related to the OP, here)
The bracts don’t look fleshy enough for a bromeliad - in this shot, for example, they look pretty papery and fibrous and are clearly boat-shaped sheaths (like Heliconia psittacorum).
http://www.montosogardens.com/heliconia_psittacorum_andromeda_small.JPG
The bracts of Tillandsia and Billbergia are indeed thin and papery, as are those of a number of other bromeliads.
You may be right, but I’m still thinking of something more (although not exactly) like this.
Maybe I’ll have more time to look tomorrow…