Hellenia Explained

Hellenia is a genus of plants in the Costaceae described as a genus with this name in 1791.^{[1] [2] [3]} It is native to Southeast Asia, southern China, the Indian Subcontinent, New Guinea, and Queensland.^[4] The type species was "H. grandiflora" Retz., which is a synonym of Hellenia speciosa.

Species

Plants of the World Online^[5] currently includes the following (with some botanists^[6] preferring to retain the genus Cheilocostus):

• Hellenia borneensis (A.D.Poulsen) Govaerts
• Hellenia globosa (Blume) S.R.Dutta - Thailand, Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo, Sumatra, Java
• Hellenia lacera (Gagnep.) Govaerts
• Hellenia sopuensis (Maas & H.Maas) Govaerts
• Hellenia speciosa (J.Koenig) S.R.Dutta (synonym Cheilocostus speciosus) - China, Indian Subcontinent, Andaman & Nicobar, Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, New Guinea, Bismarck Archipelago, Queensland; naturalized in Mauritius, Réunion, Hawaii, Central America, West Indies

formerly included^[4] now in other genera: Alpinia Hornstedtia Plagiostachys

Notes and References

1. Retzius, Anders Jahan. 1791. Observationes Botanicae 6: 18
2. http://www.tropicos.org/Name/40023004 Tropicos, Hellenia Retz.
3. Specht, C. D. & D. W. Stevenson. 2006. A new phylogeny-based generic classification of Costaceae (Zingiberales). Taxon 55(1): 153–163
4. http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/namedetail.do?name_id=248673 Kew World Checklist of Selected Plant Families
5. https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:37283-1 Plants of the World Online: Hellenia (retrieved 23 September 2020)
6. Leong-Škorničková J, Šída O (2016) Proposal to conserve the name Cheilocostus against Hellenia and Tsiana (Costaceae). Taxon (2482) 65: 1426-1427.