My first wild heliconia I spotted from a river launch in Belize. Its name, which means plant of the sun , is appropriate, because it thrives in moist, sunny jungle openings. Unlike many other species sold in flower arrangements, the modern heliconia is not the result of some plant collector's twisted years of variation and hybridization. A heliconia - in all its orange and red and purple spikes, is as brilliant in the wild as it is in the flower shops.
That its strange appearance resembles the more well known bird of paradise is not coincidental. That the colors of the ginger resemble both, or that the bright colors of each are not flowers at all, but the bracts that encapsulate and protect flowers - is not coincidental.
These are all families from the botanically bizarre taxonomic groups called the zingibers - one of the most unknown plant groups in the world. Because most groups have at least some woody ancestors, there are fossil records to track their origin. The zingibers are all herbaceous, and paleobotanists have only found their ancestors as far back as the Cretaceous. Where and when they evolved, nobody knows.
If you look at a heliconia or a bird of paradise a little bit cock-eyed, you can see that its shape loosely resembles a bunch of bananas. Again, no coincidence. Bananas are just tasty zingibers.
The bananas and plantains, once somewhat rare rainforest plants of Southeast Asia, were being cultivated in India by 1000 B.C. Arab traders found the fleshy carbohydrates to their liking, and planted them in the Middle East and Africa. Along with the fig and the pomegranate, some biblical archaeologists believe that the Garden of Eden's notorious fruit may have been the banana. The Qu'ran also possibly mentions the plant as 'the tree of paradise.'
By the age of Abraham, the fruit was common in the Middle East, and would soon be transported from Madagascar to the shores of western Africa. Portuguese sailors transplanted them in the Canary Islands, which just happened to be the last stop on missions to the new world.
This garden also contains the most memorable remains of the French army in the Lesser Antilles. A hot bath spa was ordered built by King Louis the XVI for his troops amusement.
Imagining several French military men dipping. womenless. in a hot tub reminded me that the French were never able to hold the island for very long. The French and English fought over these eastern Caribbean island scraps for hundreds of years. St. Lucia exchanged hands between the two fourteen times.
The English were settling St. Lucia by 1605, but Carib attacks kept them from creating a lasting settlement on the island. Soon, the French would begin actively pursuing their own empires in the Caribbean.
Their success would last longer in some islands, shorter in others. It was a game of chess between empires in islands populated by Africans and Caribs. In St. Lucia, like in other islands, the Africans had intermarried with the native Caribs. As the 1600's slipped into the 1700's, both the French and British would employ these Black Caribs as mercenaries, playing off their yearning for freedom to force them into battle.
