Strelitzia care guide

Strelitzia is one of the most iconic and famous tropical houseplant genus out there! Known for their beautiful and cool flowers!

 

Pro tip: Whenever a leaf takes too long to unfurl, run a towel under lukewarm water, squeeze out the excess water and gently wrap the stuck leaf and leave it like that for about 30 minutes, and that should help with unfurling! And if your leaves have slits, don´t worry, it is natural!

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WATERING:

Since the thick stems and roots hold a lot of water, they can survive months without water! To avoid stressing the plant out, water twice a month and water thoroughly.

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PROPAGATION:

You can pollinate the flower for seeds, but they take around 2 or 3 months to germinate and needs quite warm temps. You can also divide the plants if there are pups in the pot. The pups come straight from the rhizome (underground stems)

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LIGHT REQUIREMENTS:

Like all plants, Strelitzia needs lots of light in order to grow nicely and bloom. These are though plants

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BLOOM:

Some varieties bloom easier than others, and it all depends on what the conditions are in your home and if the Strelitzia is happy. For example, Strelitzia nicolia doesn´t flower/bloom regularily but when they do, the flowers are white and blue, meanwhile Strelitzia reginae get bright orange and blue flowers like you can see in the photos.

 

FUN FACT: Kind of in the middle of the flower, there is a long, blue horizontal part of the flower that can be pushed down when a little bird sits on the tip. When that happens, part of that blue thing gets pushed down while the middle of that gets pushed up and the pollen is revealed! Cool, right? Oh, and sometimes the flowers can leak nectar, also very cool to see.

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MEDIUMS:

Most  Strelitzia have really thick roots, so  when repotting use a bigger pot than you normally would, but not bigger than 3 sizes bigger than the root ball. Then go for a soil mix that is not too dense but also not too chunky like a mix of soil, leca and perlite and water thoroughly,