white bird-of-paradise flower

Strelitzia alba is a herbaceous plant of the Bird of Paradise family and is endemic to the Garden Route along the southernmost coastal regions of the Eastern and Western Cape in South Africa. The Swedish botanist Thunberg, who in 1792 described and published it in Nov. Gen. Pl.: 113 as Strelitzia augusta, first found it in the neighbourhood of the Piesang River at Plettenberg Bay – 'piesang' being Afrikaans for 'banana'. Francis Masson, who was then...