Oh I see so it was not just a description that the cameraman used? Amazing. A lucky fluke. Such a lovely flower.
Edited to say Wow! When I clicked on the Latin name in your post I realised what it is. I have one in the road through my village Its a Flame of the Forest and it blooms all over Hong Kong. What a wally I am for not seeing that.

Carol you walked right past it when you got off the minibus at my house!

Mothergoose, in answer to your question, if you have more than one query then no problem in more than one photo provided they are for identification purposes and not the sort of photos normally used in Photo-a-Day.

Thanks, Sue - I will post them one at a time but won't sweat over the interval.

Thanks, Ren - for identifying the flower. I am sure you are correct, although your photo of such a big tree was a surprise. The flower I photographed in Borneo was on a small shrub about 1 to 2 metres high. Presumably it will one day become a tree. Next time I visit HK, I'll have to check out your tree!

Here's the next one - same locale. Is this possibly a Strelitzia (bird of paradise)? The colouring seems wrong but the shape seems right.

That was my immediate thought before reading what you have said so I wold think that it is a variety of it.

It's definitely a Strelitzia - probably a 'Wild Banana' or 'Mountain Strelitzia' Strelitzia caudata.

I remember bringing some Strelitzia home from Madeira - their tourist industry is honed to a fine art and all you have to do is say that you want some flowers to take home, they ask how many and what flight number, you hand over the cash and at the airport there will be a very long box with your name on it. (No, not a coffin!) I don't know what they do these days with cheapo airlines that charge a fortune for every package but back in the nineties when I went everyone on our plane had boxes of flowers in the hold. Anyway, I ended up with birds of paradise all over the house and they lasted for weeks!

That reminds me of a trip to Tenerife in 1982. I bought some Strelitzia and they arrived as a huge bouquet ready for my flight home. I flew into Gatwick and needed to go by train to Southampton. I had bought a very swish grey suede coat with a large furry fabric collar which I needed to wear rather than pack and was wearing high heel strappy sandals. There I was, in April sporting a tan and dressed to the nines and when I got to Southampton the gate on that platform was closed as it was late in the evening which meant getting my heavy case up the stairs and across then down stairs, at that time there were no passenger lifts. I spotted a rail worker and asked if there was a lift that I could use, he then took me in the luggage lift then just before I got out he rather shyly asked "Excuse me but are you a famous ballerina or something?". Before you start snorting Sara, I was slim at that stage!

(Still snorting....sorry...)

Too funny, although Sue has the 'look' of a ballerina even today.

Is it illegal to fly home the actual plant (bird of paradise), rather than just the flowers? Cuz then you could enjoy them every year. I had one for over 20 years and was taller than me before I gave it to a friend who actually had an atrium (and thus it bloomed more often)

Anyway, we've had four days of overnight frost in a row, so all the "above ground" stuff is toast. Pity, cuz I really LOVE scarlet runner beans.

Sue could probably grow them, assuming the temperature in Jersey never falls below 10-12 degrees C; in Britain you would probably need a conservatory/heated glasshouse though they might grow outside in Cornwall. It would be legal to bring a plant home from elsewhere in the EU but as the best means of propagation (it says on the RHS website) is division it would still be a sizeable plant and it might not be easy to get one on the plane. However you can order the plants online and have them delivered to your front door. Strelitzia four feet high, in pot, £73.50 including delivery and tax. Bargain, I'll have five. And a new conservatory please.

I was clearing undergrowth and weeds from round one of my bird tables this morning when I came across a very fine clump of cannabis plants! The birds have been happily pecking away at them - perhaps that explains why the pigeons in my garden are wandering around on the lawn rather than flying with a don't care if the dog does chase me attitude.

Cool info Flopsy, thanks. Just wondered why people bring home the flowers rather than the plant. We don't generally think in terms of growing things outside here, unless we plan on bringing them in for winter. My bird was never an outdoor plant.

We're zone 3 here, so "gardening" is more an exercise in masochism than anything else, but it DOES teach you not to count your chickens before they're hatched lol

Killing myself laughing Christina. Did they ask for Mars Bars? lol

As I recall from that time you could bring in the plants provided they had been sufficiently cleaned of soil and I think that you might have had to declare them at customs. I am going back to 1982 though, I remember the year as on the way home we could see the task force convoy heading towards The Falklands from the aeroplane windows. I certainly used to buy various seeds when abroad. It is just as well that I don't live in Australia, I could have ended up on one of their Customs television programmes.

I was going to the USA on one occasion and one of the people I was visiting, a former Brit, asked me to bring her some tea - proper, English (i.e. Indian) tea. So I stuck a pound of PG Tips in my suitcase and off I went. The plane was about 30 mins from landing when they handed out a declaration form which, amongst other things, said that plant products were forbidden and if we had any they must now be declared... oops. So naturally, being honest and above board, I ignored the tick box altogether and skipped to the bit instructing me to declare any animal products... whereupon visions of the Bisto gravy browning in my case loomed large - but not large enough to make me tick that box either.

As usual we took forever to get through Immigration - there's something about a British passport that makes every US Immigration official think we're all so indigent and poverty-stricken that we're going to abscond into the wild midwest and work without a green card for a few bucks a week and must therefore be interrogated for an hour while time moves on, our vacation is eaten up, and the bathroom seems desperately far away. Eventually we got to Customs, only to discover that they were searching everyone. Every bag was open, every piece of underwear was strewn about the place, and in one instance they had actually taken a razor to the stitching of some poor man's beautiful leather briefcase and pulled the padding out. It didn't help that my brain immediately went "oh &^£%$ Bisto!" and visions of medieval torture instruments sprang to mind.

Then it was my turn. The Customs officer took my declaration form but before she said anything I asked if I could ask something... I left that box blank, I said, but realise that I do have some tea for my English friend. Technically it's a plant product, I said, but it's been treated and dried and anything else will be killed when we pour boiling water on it... She looked at me and said "we could tax you on that" to which I replied "no taxation without representation!" and she laughed so much she let me through, unsearched, untaxed, and the Bisto still undeclared. I told my friends this story when handing out their goodies. "Wow" said my American host, "you must have got the only educated Customs officer in the USA." Well, it was Boston.

Oh Flopsy. I smuggled an apple or orange into the US! A leftover from the airline food.

Boston explains it for sure, but still very funny.

I have a sort of similar story for our trip home from New Orleans 2 weeks after 9/11.

Oh Flopsy, that story is priceless! Since I travel a lot, I have lots of funny customs stories but regrettably this is not the place for them.

P.S. I wasn't trying to imply that anybody else's posts didn't belong here - only that my funny customs stories don't have anything to do with gardening or plants.

Sara's photo reminded me of this. Do they belong to the same family? They are known as gulmohar trees here in India.

Gulmohar = Flamboyant = Phoenix tail = Flame of the Forest = Poinciana.
All are regional common names for the same plant - Delonix regia.

MotherGoose, I think your yellow flower might be a Heliconia, rather than a Strelitzia, based on nothing more than my instinct, since they are pretty similar in appearance.

Oooer, I think that you could be right, I had never heard of that but on looking for Heliconia I have seen some very similar.

Both Strelitzia and Heliconia are in the Order: Zingiberales. They are extremely similar. In Strelitzia, the flower stays compact while in Heliconia it starts out densely packed then the individual florets become extended on a central stalk.
Strelitzia has its flowers on an upward pointed stem while Heliconia can be found on both erect and drooping stems. The common Banana (Order: Zingiberales, Genus: Musa) has florets/flower assemblies that remind one of the Heliconia, with many florets on each stalk while the Strelitzia generally has a single floret on each stalk.

Thanks, Auntie. I love the name Phoenix Tail. Had never heard of it before.

Many thanks to you all for your input regarding my unknown exotic flowers - it is greatly appreciated and it will help me complete my scrapbook of that trip.

And please accept my apologies for my absence recently. It's been a hectic fortnight.

This is the only flower for which the staff at the resort had a name - they called it "spider lily" but I have no idea how "accurate" that name is. Does anybody out there recognise it by another name?

Spider Lily is indeed a common name for Hymenocallis, a member of the Amaryllis family. If you have success growing Amaryllis, this would do well for you. And like the Amaryllis it can be forced to bloom indoors. I have seen it in the Garden Centers prepackaged, ready to force into bloom, at the same time as the Amaryllis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenocallis