Strelitzia nicolai and the Japanese White Eye

The Saturday before I left town for Hawaii, I met my students at Brookside Gardens.  If you remember, Saturday the 29th was snowy, sleety, rainy and cold.  To wit, we covered some plants in the conservatory.  One of which was the giant bird of paradise, or Strelitzia nicolai.  While looking at it, we wondered what kind of pollinators would frequent it, and its relative, the regular bird of paradise, or Strelitzia reginae.  We suspected perhaps birds, due to the large, perchable flower and in the case of S. reginae, the parrot-colored flower.

While it's not certain that this bird, the Japanese White Eye, is the primary pollinator, its relationship here is pretty clear.  The bird, also known as Zosterops japonicus, is an introduced bird to Hawaii, originally brought to the islands with the good intent of using it to control populations of destructive insects.  As you can guess, this did not work out too well and now the bird is a vector for avian diseases that affect the native bird species. 

Back to the plant -- this may look familiar -- in fact the plant is very similar to traveler's palm, which I blogged about on NYPAOS.  Aloha!