Glad you liked it! And I don’t imagine you encounter a lot of these in Boston, other than in floral arrangements and indoor pots.

Several commenters have mentioned growing up with these plants in their gardens in California and Florida. Strelitzia reginae looked not even remotely like anything I was accustomed to seeing in Ohio—with the result that I tended to associate them with vacations, tropical adventures (Florida was where Flipper, Gentle Ben, and Jonny Quest lived!) and even science fiction.

(This affords a useful cue to remember that “exotic”, as the word has popularly come to be used, is a word that says more about you than about whatever you’re describing; it’s a matter of perspective rather than an innate and fixed attribute. Here’s Nigerian expat Tiktoker, dancehall musician, and prison activist Yinka “Lamb” Lawanson, at long last! getting to enjoy an archetypal exotic Global North experience, to the amusement of his American-born wife Taccara “Ling” Rae:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TPqdYupAkoY

This wasn’t deliberate on my part, but during the subsequent Kelly Clarkson interview, danged if Lamb isn’t clothed in Bird of Paradise flower colors!)