Whence
Anthurium (flamingo flower)
Plant

Where does Anthurium (flamingo flower) come from?

The anthurium, or flamingo flower, comes from the mountain forests of southwestern Colombia and Ecuador. Its glossy, heart-shaped blooms became Hawaii's most important cut flower, but the plant only reached the islands from London in 1889.

Wild in Andean forests

Anthurium andraeanum is native to Ecuador and southwestern Colombia. In the wild it grows on other plants in mountain forests, and there its 'hearts' are orange-red and blistered. It is named after the French horticulturist Édouard André, who found it on his travels in Colombia and Ecuador in the 1870s; his botanising in the Andes brought many plants new to European gardens. Today's cultivated anthuriums, smooth or blistered and in many colours, often look quite different from the wild species.

From London to Hawaii

In 1889 S. M. Damon brought Anthurium andraeanum to Hawaii from London, describing its spathe as shell-pink. It grew on the Damon estates at Moanalua and spread slowly to other growers as cuttings. In the late 1930s and 1940s Hawaiian growers learned to raise anthuriums from seed, which brought more variety, and backyard growers began supplying the islands' flower shops. Research begun in 1950 by Haruyuki Kamemoto led to a breeding programme, and the flower became a major commercial crop.

The heart is not a petal

The shiny red 'heart' is a spathe, a kind of bract, or modified leaf, that sits beneath the flower spike. The real flowers are on that spike, the spadix: many tiny flowers packed in close spirals, each with both male and female parts, which later bear the seeds. Anthurium andraeanum and Anthurium scherzerianum are the only species of the genus with bright red spathes, and breeders in Hawaii and the Netherlands have given them many other colours, from salmon to pink.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Anthurium andraeanum ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Anthurium ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Édouard André ↗ · apsnet.org ↗

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