http://www.garden-nz.co.nz/plants-and-products/plant-of-the-week/show-us-your-ginger.html
While I think the 'Hug a Ginga Day' sounds daft (I had to look up what it meant, see here if you're in the dark like me)......the info about actual Ginger (the plant that is) is quite interesting.
At the moment I've got a tropical arrangement on my kitchen table, which includes some flowering galangal, that's it there with the yellow/white flowers and fabulous green foliage. I've put a bird of paradise flower in there too, another of my favourite tropical plants.
But I truly hope and trust that this is in fact galangal, as it is quite rampant and comes up even if you think you've dug it all out as is the case with me! It is beautiful though, the flowers are divinely scented. The rhizomes are pink, see here.
Can anyone verify that this is actually real galangal? I read somewhere that sometimes another type of ginger is sold and either intentionally or mistakenly called galangal...
I've found there are so many different related gingers. I have some turmeric growing in a pot in my greenhouse, but in the Indian grocer shop I go to there are just so many different colours and types of ginger, galangal, turmeric. I also have a ginger lilly (hedychium gardnerianum) which smells divine too.
ReplyDeleteHi Matron, thanks for your comment. Yes it's all very confusing about the types of ginger. I guess I have to trust that the person I bought it from was certain it was galangal! The ginger lilly you are talking about is a terribly invasive weed over here in NZ! See here: http://www.rnzih.org.nz/pages/hedychiumgardnerianum.htm. It grows rampantly all over the place and is really hard to get rid of once established!
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