I have 2 beautiful stands of Heliconia psittacorum that were planted this spring. The have grown, bloomed & spread beautifully. Now, the night-time temps are getting into the 40's and these plants are taking a beating. I didn't realize they were very, very cold sensitive. I'm not sure if you can dig up the roots/rhizomes & store them like cannas, or simply cut them down to the ground, mulch heavily & see if they'll come back in the spring.
Any ideas?
Jo-Ann
Raraflora says they can got to the 30's, and another site says they can be wintered over in their dormant state, just like other bulbs and rhizomes. Do a google.com search to read all the information.
JoAnn,
In this neck of the woods we leave them in the ground, they come back when the ground temps warm up.
Some folks cut them back and mulch the bed. Other people leave the ragged foilage on until spring as it provide some protection from freezing, I think the mulch looks better.
Helconia doesn't like the weather when it goes below 60.
a photo from warmer days>
In the spring, I plant some of each of the different kinds of heliconias that i have in the ground, and they bloom well, and then in the fall, before the frosts set in, I dig them up and repot them and overwinter them in the grhouse where they continue to bloom. Not sure if you can treat them like cannas and stick them in a dark place, but you have so many there that it might be worthwhile for you to experiment and dig up half of them and of that half-put some under the house (or some dark, semi-warm place) and repot the other half and bring inside where there is light and warmth.
It looks like you have a psittacorum heliconia, and those are not particularly cold hardy. They might die over the winter, if you don't dig some or all of them up. At the very least, I would mulch them heavily.
Heliconia don't really 'go dormant'. They are always in active growth. If you tried to cut the large growing ones like Bihai, Caribaea, pendulas, collinsiana, champeiana, rostrata etc and mulch them, you would sacrifice all your blooms for a year (or more) until the stand got mature enough to bloom again (18 mos-2 years).
The only reason you can do it with psitticorums is because they are a dwarf variety that does not require 2 years to bloom like most heliconias do (some of the latispathas will also bloom on 'new' growth)
I leave mine in the ground and let the frost kill them back. They come back in Spring. In FL and LA zone 9 and above you can do that, because the ground doesn't freeze and the rhizome mass won;t be killed.
Most heliconias can go to the mid-40's (even the large growers) and not be hurt appreciably, especially in the very short mild FL winters. Prolonged temps in the 30's night after night, however, will send them into decline.
