Many Heliconia flowers resemble the striking plumage of birds-of-paradise. Others evoke lobster claws or toucan beaks.

Their appearance is where heliconia rostrata gets its common names: lobster’s claw or bird of paradise. The small, yellow, drooping flowers sit within these bracts. The blooms usually appear on ...

But nearly half of the species in the genus are threatened with extinction, a new analysis finds, putting the genus — which includes species such as bird-of-paradise look-alike Heliconia ...

Many Heliconia flowers resemble the striking plumage of birds-of-paradise. Others evoke lobster claws or toucan beaks. Gardeners have cultivated Heliconia species for centuries as striking ...

Heliconia bella in Panama. This species was discovered and named by John Kress, an emeritus curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and one of the authors of the new study.