Walk into my backyard on a hot summer afternoon and the first thing you see is a splash of red and orange — a ten-foot shrub blazing against the wall like the yard's been set on fire. That's a red bird of paradise. A short distance away, a smaller tree stands about twelve feet tall, covered in tiny yellow blossoms and dropping pea-shaped seed pods that occasionally pop like little firecrackers, launching seeds thirty, forty, sixty feet across the gravel. That's a Mexican bird of paradise. Somewhere in the world — though rarely in a Las Vegas yard — a lush plant with a flower shaped like a bird's head is thriving in dappled shade and moist soil. That's a tropical bird of paradise, and it's the reason so many people around here get confused.
Bird of paradise is a common name, and common names are trouble. Walk into a nursery in Southern Nevada and ask for one, and you might get any of three plants — from two completely different genera — with wildly different needs, sizes, and prospects for surviving a Las Vegas summer. Let me walk you through all three so you know what you're actually asking for, and which ones you probably want.
The tropical bird of paradise is the genus Strelitzia. Big, broad leaves. A dramatic, showy flower shaped exactly like a bird's head — that's where the whole family gets its name in the first place. It's the plant you picture when you think of a resort lobby in Hawaii.
It's not particularly well suited to life in Southern Nevada. Strelitzia wants shade. It wants moist soil. It wants the kind of humid, sheltered conditions our Mojave climate is decidedly not offering.
That said — if you've got the right microclimate, you can pull it off. Find a spot that stays shaded most of the day, keep the soil consistently moist, put down organic mulch, and improve the soil at planting time. The shorter varieties, the ones that top out around four or five feet, do considerably better here than the tall ones. The tall Strelitzias are much harder to grow in the valley, though even those can succeed if you find just the right pocket of your yard. But for most homeowners, the tropical bird of paradise is going to be a fight — and there are two other plants with the same name that will practically grow themselves.
Now, this is where the common names get properly confusing, so stay with me. When most people in Southern Nevada talk about bird of paradise, they're talking about a completely different genus — Caesalpinia. And within Caesalpinia, the one I love most is the Mexican bird of paradise, Caesalpinia mexicana.
She grows into a small tree, maybe ten or twelve feet tall and about the same in spread, though I've seen them reach fifteen. Her flowers are small and yellow, and she carries a lot of them at once. In the heart of summer — end of July, beginning of August — she's just blooming her little heart out, with more flowers coming on behind the ones already open.
Here's the part I find delightful. The seed pods are pea-type — two sides that press against each other as they dry. And they keep pressing, harder and harder, until finally the whole pod snaps itself apart violently and flings the seeds. I've found them as far as sixty feet from the parent plant. You can actually hear the pods pop when they go off. If you're lucky, one might bonk you in the back of the head while you're standing in the garden. Don't worry — they're light. That's how Mexican bird of paradise disperses itself, and I think it's one of the coolest tricks in the desert plant world.
While we're clearing up the name confusion, let me warn you off one of them. The yellow bird of paradise — the one with the larger yellow and red flowers, not to be confused with the small-yellow-flowered Mexican bird — is a plant I don't plant. It tends to get borers, and it tends to have trunk dieback. Around Southern Nevada it's just not worth the trouble. If a nursery offers you one, say no thanks and ask for one of the other two.
The third one — and probably the one you already see every week driving around the valley without knowing what it was — is the red bird of paradise. Some people call this one Mexican bird of paradise too, which I think is mostly an error, though technically no one is in charge of enforcing common names.
Red bird of paradise is a joy. Bright splashes of red and orange flowers, about ten feet tall in my yard, and here's the thing: she blooms pretty much all summer long. She loves the heat. Our worst summer days, when everything else in the garden looks like it's begging for mercy, red bird of paradise is putting on more flowers.
In winter she shuts down, and if it gets cold enough, she'll freeze back to the ground. But honestly, it doesn't get that cold here anymore. I haven't seen mine freeze back in years. If yours does, no problem — you can cut it to the ground and it'll regrow, easily six feet in a season. If you want it to grow larger over time, just wait until it comes out of winter and then prune out the dead wood. That's how mine is now about ten feet, and it'll probably be a little bigger and wider next year.
The other beautiful thing about both the Mexican and red birds of paradise: they like our soils. You don't have to do a lot of amendment. They'll take rock mulch. They'll perform for you.
Here's the one thing I've discovered about red bird of paradise, and it matters. If you plant her into cool soil, she won't really take off. She'll sulk. She'll sit there.
Plant her when the soils are warm — either early in the growing season once things have warmed up, or later in the year while there's still heat in the ground. Do that, and she takes off quickly, then keeps growing quickly.
If you've already got one that's not growing much, here's what I want you to do: never take off any live foliage. I mean it. Every year she'll produce a little more live foliage than the year before. Every year that means a little more energy. Eventually she picks up speed and takes off. I planted the ten-foot red bird of paradise in my yard into cool soil, and she didn't take off for the longest time. I stopped removing anything green. And now she's about ten feet tall.
There's a lesson in this trio, if you want to take it. The tropical bird of paradise is beautiful, and I understand why people want to grow it — but here in the Mojave, it will always be a plant we're fighting the climate to keep alive. The desert birds of paradise, the ones that share the name almost by accident of translation, give us the same bright color, the same drama, the same summer show — while asking us for almost nothing in return. Rock mulch. Warm soil at planting. A little patience.
That's the trade the desert always offers, if you're willing to take it. Choose plants that want to be here, and you spend your summer enjoying them instead of nursing them.
Norm Schilling is the owner of Schilling Horticulture Group in Las Vegas and co-host of Desert Bloom on KNPR. Send your gardening questions to letters@knpr.org.
