Psittacorum Heliconias: Care, Cut Flowers and the Running Habit Explained

Psittacorums are upright, small-growing heliconias native to South America, and among the most popular heliconias for cut flowers anywhere. Selective breeding and hybridisation have given us a huge range of colours, bract sizes and growth forms — they’re often called the parakeet flower or parrot flower, a nod to their stunning tropical colouring. If you’ve ever wanted a heliconia that flowers reliably, cuts beautifully, and doesn’t demand much from you, psittacorums are usually the answer. But they come with one genuine catch worth understanding before you plant — more on that below.

Care and Growing Conditions

Psittacorums prefer a warmer climate, though some varieties — Petra among them — will handle a sheltered position as far south as coastal Sydney.

They grow best in:

• Full sun
• Free-draining soil with plenty of organic matter
• Regular feeding — a complete fertiliser applied every four to six weeks, particularly through the hot, humid months, since psittacorums are genuinely heavy feeders

To keep a clump looking its best long-term, it’s worth whipper-snipping or mowing it right down every few years, then working compost or manure into the bed as it regrows — this resets the clump and keeps flowering strong rather than letting it get tired and overcrowded.

They’re also excellent for mass planting or erosion control, given how readily they spread to fill a bed — which brings us to the one thing every psittacorum grower needs to understand before planting.

The Running Habit: What “Heliconias Will Take Over Your Garden” Actually Means

It’s a common line in gardening circles — “heliconias will take over your garden” — and like most blanket warnings, it’s really a case of poor plant selection and placement getting blamed on the whole genus. Heliconias, much like bamboo, can be loosely divided into running and clumping varieties. Both are rhizomatous, but running types send new shoots out a distance from the parent plant, while clumping types send new growth up close, forming a tight clump rather than spreading.

Psittacorums are the running variety — and they’re the ones that cop the most flack in gardening conversations, often unfairly given how good they are in the right spot. They’re easy to propagate, quick to flower (even in pots), and produce genuinely stunning cut flowers — which is exactly why they’re so widely available and so quick to fill a garden bed.

But that same vigour is the catch: psittacorums like to run. Left without a barrier to contain the rhizomes, they’ll happily spread into your lawn and crowd out neighbouring plants over time. This matters more the further north you are — psittacorums aren’t particularly cold hardy, so in cooler climates their spread naturally slows on its own. From Brisbane northward, though, plant placement genuinely needs some thought, and a physical barrier (buried edging, a mowed strip, or planting in a spot naturally bounded by a path or hard surface) is a sensible precaution rather than an overreaction.

The practical takeaway: know which type you’re planting before you plant it. A psittacorum planted with intention — as a mass-planted bed, an erosion-control strip, or a contained border — is a brilliant, low-maintenance plant. The same psittacorum planted right next to a treasured garden bed with no barrier is how the “heliconias take over” reputation gets earned.

Psittacorums as Cut Flowers

If you’re in a tropical or subtropical garden and love having fresh flowers in the house, psittacorums are close to perfect for it. They flower year-round, and a cut stem can last up to two weeks in a vase — genuinely excellent longevity for a tropical flower. They’re unfussy, need very little care, and take up surprisingly little space in the garden relative to how much they give back, provided they’ve got adequate water and nutrition to keep pumping out flowers.

Between the colour range now available through modern hybrids and their reliability as a cut flower, a well-placed clump of psittacorums can supply fresh, tropical arrangements for the house essentially all year round.

Happy gardening!

Ann

[Internal linking note: link specific variety names (Petra, Lillian, etc.) to their product pages once live. Link to the general Heliconias care guide and the Cold Hardy article (Petra’s Sydney-hardiness is relevant there). Consider tags: Heliconias category already covers the genus; consider “Cut Flower” tag given the strong cut-flower angle throughout.]