A New Baby

As you all know, I am fixated on Gingers, particularly butterfly gingers. Hedychium are my passion. While I only have 5 or so varieties, I am always on the lookout for new additions for my garden. Last year I found hedychium germanium on Ebay. It is a kahili ginger which means that all of the flowers come out at once, creating a "drum" of flowers on the top of the stalk, reminiscent of the kahili standards of old Hawaii. I planted my rhysome as soon as it arrived, and watched it grow. The seller said it grows to 12 feet in Hawaii, but I didn't expect it to grow as tall here. Three stalks were growing strongly last October, but I knew it was too late in our season for them to bloom. Still I was fascinated with them. They were very thick, but only about 20" tall. And they survived the cold snap in February! Mid-April new stalks appeared, and the older stalks started to die off. Well that is customary for gingers. I watched the new stalks getting bigger, soon dwarfing the older stalks. Then, lo and behold! A flower stalk appeared on one of the stalks! I was so giddy!! Sure, the stalks were short, only 24" tall or so, but the bud was there, as plain as day. I waited patiently, and then there it was - a beautiful cluster of yellow and orange flowers, all sweetly scented.

The new ginger is a wonderful addition to my garden. The sweet fragrance blends in beautifully with the spicy and sweet plumeria blossoms that are starting to arrive this month, and I am sure more will come as gingers tend to send up stalks in profusion once it starts to flower. My mauve pink gingers - hedychium elizabeth - have many flower stalks about to bloom, and Flavum is also about to pop. The only slowpoke this year is the white ginger, the most frangrant of the bunch. Hopefully they will bloom before they all fall over. I will keep you informed.