Discover Top Posts Tagged with #zingiber spectabile

2023_06_05

#june #england #kew gardens #flowers #Zingiber spectabile #beehive ginger #botanic gardens

Pleasing Fungus Beetle, Gibbifer sp., Erotylidae on Beehive Ginger, Zingiber spectabile by Andreas Kay Via Flickr: from Ecuador: www.youtube.com/AndreasKay

#Andreas Kay #Beehive Ginger #beetle #City Nature Challenge #Coleoptera #Ecuador #Erotylidae #flower #Fungus beetle #Gibbifer sp.#ginger #Tena #Zingiber spectabile #Zingiberaceae

Zingiber spectabile

Beehive Ginger

(via)

#Zingiber spectabile #Zingiber #Beehive Ginger #flower #orange #ginger #herbs #ethnobotany

Zingiber spectabile, Zingiberaceae

Plants from tropical areas have some of the most incredible and spectacular flowers, mostly due to the high level of biodiversity and strong competition that occur there, but the inflorescences of the beehive ginger are really amazing to look at. This very large perennial from SE Asia is hardly contained in one of the glasshouses at Glasgow Botanic Gardens and I’ve never seen somebody walking by it without stopping to take a good look!

As you can see from the photos (I tried to take some kind of macro shot with a hand-held lens I use for identification) the small, true flowers emerge one by one from the fleshy, yellow bracts that make the structure look almost like a beehive. The bracts can vary in colour, from yellow to pink and red, sometimes changing as they age. It can be grown in a container, where it won’t grow to full size, but under the right conditions it will flower. I have tried to grow some store-bought common ginger (Zingiber officinale) last year, and it grew better than I expected, but still I don’t have the space to make it very successful, so I’ll leave growing Zingiberaceae for the moment and I’ll just enjoy observing them at the Gardens. The rhizomes of both species are used for their pungent and spiced flavour, but in a Western grocery store you will definitely never find beehive ginger.