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This winter, in the gardens of the Pedralbes monastery in Barcelona, a beautiful bird of paradise has bloomed out of time, due to the high temperatures.
This plant gives a touch of spring in advance and I have photographed it for this report in La Vanguardia's Readers' Photos with some reflection effects with the lights of this historic Barcelona site.
The bird of paradise is special. And I'll tell you why. They first discovered bilirubin in this plant (Strelitzia reginae) with its characteristic tropical-looking flower.
A team of researchers from the Department of Biology at Florida International University (FIU) identified bilirubin in the flower of the bird of paradise in a study. It stands out for the bright colors of its petals, which can remain that way even for decades after death.
This realization was useful for practical applications such as color manipulation through plant breeding and genetics.
The bird of paradise is a flower highly appreciated as an ornamental plant. It is native to South Africa and came to Europe with the Scottish botanist Francis Masson, who introduced it to Great Britain in 1773.
Later, Sir Joseph Banks described it in 1788 and gave it the name Strelitzia in honor of Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of King George III of England. Furthermore, the epithet reginae comes from Latin and means: "of the queen."
So we can say that the bird of paradise is the surprising "queen" of this winter of spring temperatures, where meteorologically nothing is what it should be and with each passing day the borders between the seasons of the year are more intertwined and diluted.
If it is popularly said that "spring alters the blood", this spring winter of the bird of paradise seems to want to do justice to what Juan Luis Guerra sang: "My bilirubin rises; Oh, my bilirubin rises."
