Africanaussie

The little pathway to the center of the garden..... I love the way the beehive gingers are all congregated at the edge of the path.  They will be in flower like this for months. The shampoo ginger (which is also part of the beehive family) has a few flowers forming in its little pockets. The lady that gave my this ginger said she would just run her hands over the inforescence and her hands would be quite soapy.  Well I did that and defiinetly got some liquid out of the pockets - it did smell divine - sort of gingery - but no suds.  Was I expecting too much?

A new ginger flower has appeared. A friend gave me a piece of rhizome a couple of months ago and called it shampoo ginger. It is also known as pinecone ginger, and these new inflorescences (as they are called) do seem to look like a pinecone. They are similar to the yellow beehive ginger but do not seem to have the open bracts. It will be interesting to see the fluid that is created in the bracts - evidently it is a very sweet ginger smelling shampoo! What with my loofas, and ginger shampoo I might go into the bath products business! We have had a tremndous amount of rain in the last couple of days. This is the "little" creek that trickles along for most of the year just down the road from us. It is normally about 30ft below this bridge. Now it is a swirling brown river! The skies are overcast and I think we in store for further rain - I like the way this heleconia shows up against the cloudy sky. The tropical flowers love this type of weather - a bromeliad flower h...