pretty!

That's a lovely picture! The shell ginger I got from Ralph perished over the winter... I think flies got to it... :-(

In a past life I worked as a zookeeper and our zoo had one of those massive greenhouses made up to look like the tropics and I remember carefully making my way through a jungle of this ginger to get to the "out-of-view-of-the-public" feeding stations. It only seemed to bloom when it got close to 8 feet tall so I was surprised that my tiny 3 foot stalk bloomed - must have been the mild winter (they're not hardy, but I only keep above freezing in my winter shelter).

I'm surprised that both my variegated and my solid green ones came back. I'm assuming the mild winter we had too. I normally keep the variegated one inside during the winter but the pot was too big to easily move.

John, I have been planning to call you to let you know that mine has a flower on it, also. It is in too much shade and is not as pretty as yours. Jeri, I still have a smaller one in a pot if you want a replacement for yours - let me know.

Ralph, the one you gave me is also blooming for the first time, with three bloom spikes so far this summer. Now I'm hoping that my Alpinia formosana will follow suit!