Fresh focus

摘要

Like characters in an epic novel, heliconias belong to a very large and diverse family (the Heliconiaceae), with perhaps a hundred or more species and more than 350 officially recognized varieties—all within one genus, Heliconia. One of the unusual traits of this family is its propensity to hybridize on its own, without any assistance or interference from human breeders. In other words, one species may pollinate another, giving rise to endless new variants. As a result, botanists may find it difficult to precisely identify a given specimen from the wild, and it's hard to say exactly how many species exist.