PlantFiles: White Ginger, Garland Lily, Butterfly Ginger
Hedychium coronarium

The plants seem to do well, and they multiply each year. I have them planted in a partial shade area of my garden. By the time they bloom, (late September early October) the cold mountain mornings seem to get the best of them. I wounder if I move them to full sun if they will bloom earlier? Can anyone advise?

My ginger plants here in Birmingham grow very well. They are about 4to 5 ft. when they bloom in august, when they come back up in the following spring they have usually multiplied by twenty to thirty pecent.
i have had one of my landscaping clients plants to obtain a six ft. stand in a fertile moist area near limestone out cropings in the back yard.

Make a ginger lei. Pick the fat buds with stems, wrap up in leaves and keep in a glass of water until you're ready. Use any thread, even crochet thread is fine, and a needle that passes through the hollow stem and beneath the stamens. The stems should be clipped a qtr. to a half inch. You'll need about a 100 blossoms. Fewer will make a shorter lei. The flower buds will fit together, stamens lying in the same direction. Leave an end of string/thread before the knot to help with tying the end, or wrap around a little twig to keep the first flower bud from slipping off. In Hawaii we used lei needles made of long wire with a tight little tiny hook for the thread. Several flowers can be strung at once before sliding them down the thread. These leis are so special!

The White Ginger illicits fond memories of my childhood in Hawaii when we would go into the deep forested areas of Nuuanu Valley and the Pali to pick these fragrant blossoms to use them to make leis. Even songs are written about them. Gingers, both white and yellow, grow wild in Hawaii. My mother grew an entire hedge of them, and when they would bloom, the heady fragrance filled the air night and day. How lucky I was to grow up in the Hawaiian tropics.

My father used to bring me this elegant pure white flower with the most charming fragrance from the wild back home after his fishing trip. I miss it so much!! Please let me know where I can get it in NY metro area. Thanks!!

I live in Atlanta, GA, have this plant. It was given to me by someone in the family. Since I didn't know what it was, I originally kept them in a container, it didn't do much, green leaves. Decided to put them in the ground. They grow and multiply like weeds. I'm going to have to dig some out and give them away! Incredible sweet scents and attract ants.

This plant has beautiful foliage and very fragrant flowers. My butterfly ginger is over 5ft tall and is growing next to a chain link fence to help support it. They do tend to fall over if not supported.

I have a wonderful seating area next to this plant and there are a couple of hummingbirds that love to visit this plant.

The Lazy gardener again. My gingers usually only get water when it rains. They don't flower much, maybe they would if I watered them. Mine are taller than my 1 story house.

This will be my 3rd year with this plant. I leave it out in the winter and it has come back every year.

I have grown this plant here in the Pacific North West for 5 years and I've never seen a bloom. It gets a lot of handsome tropical looking foliage during the growing season, just no blooms. It dies down to the ground here in the winter and it's slow to come up in the spring. I have it in a shady location, but perhaps it would do better with some sun here. After reading these other comments I'm thinking it might do better in a wetter area as well.
I'll re-post if any of these changes makes a difference.

This plant thrives very well in places where the soil is continuously moist. It seems to bloom better in this condition than when planted in drier areas.

This plant grew in a swampy area on our homestead in Jacksonville, Florida. It's fragrance is a delight.

The H. coronarium is very prevalent in our area and can be found in many marshy locations and along ditch banks.

I was thrilled one night to find a hummingbird moth visiting the blossoms to feed on the nectar. The moth was so intent on dining that it didn't mind me walking up and observing it from a distance of just a few inches. The moths have the same movement of darting foreward and backwards as does a hummingbird, and they have the eerie trait of their eyes glowing bright orange in the dark if there happens to be a light source nearby.

Jeremy

Beautiful plant that grows well here in Titusville, FL. All ours are in mostly shaded to fully shaded locations. They get 30 minutes of water, twice a week. We cut them back to the ground after they bloom. They are very fragrant.

Another of my all-time favourites. And there's a whole bank of them in bloom as we speak. The fragrance is just what fragrance is all about: a hint of something special, caught in a breeze.

White ginger has always been one of my favorite flowers and finally got some last Nov. My mother had tried to grow it on the other side of the island, but being near the ocean with sandy soil and pretty dry, it never did very well no matter how she babied it. It has done very well here and its first flowers opened tonight...wonderful fragrance!! Recently I discovered it is one of 3 gingers on UH Botony Dept pest plant list. Although it has been a problem in some areas, popularity with gardeners and lei makers has kept it from biological control...can't keep an enemy insect or disease in problem areas and out of a growers back yard I guess... I was looking for something else on pest list when I discovered ginger on it... still love it.

Although many species and hybrid Hedychiums do extremely well in the south of the UK at least, H coronarium rarely flowers before autumn is well under way (often not until November). Unfortunately flowers can be damaged by autumn winds and rain and the lower temperatures mean that the fragrance is barely discernible. It is a very hardy plant, but needs hotter and longer summers than we have here to perform really well.

Mariposa, (white or butterfly ginger) is one of my all time favorite plants. It is the National Flower of Cuba. As a child and youth growing up there I remember little boys selling the blooms at ten stems for a penny. I was able to grow some white ginger while living in South Carolina, many years ago. I now live in Hawaii where they grow wild with the least encouragement. The area where I live is quite rainy. We do not fertilize them. They grow well in full sun or deep shade. Beautiful leis are made with the blooms. You can also find them with a yellow bloom and in a beautiful salmon pink color. Although they are also heavily scented, they don't seem to be as fragrant as the white. White ginger in Hawaiian is called "awapuhi keo kea".

The fragrance of this plant is wonderful, but the blooms are less-than-spectacular in my climate (California's Central Valley.)

The individual blossoms tend to wilt quickly, hang on, and are unsightly as new blooms open up in the cone. And yes, it does tend to spread quickly. Hedychium gardnerianum is a better plant for spectacular bloom and fragrance.

This past Sunday our Koi & Watergarden club visited a nursery in Gainesville, Florida, that specializes in gingers. We were presented with a short lecture, some handouts, and an opportunity to buy--which we did!

I purchased what I thought was a white butterfly ginger, which the lecturer said is the most cold hardy of the all the gingers, and will overwinter as far north as Atlanta, GA and Raleigh, NC, as it originated in the Himalayas. The white butterfly ginger also has the largest flower, and is the most fragrant of all the Hedychiums, which is the general botanical or genus name for all the butterfly gingers. In the warmer parts of Florida and Texas Hedychiums are evergreen and everblooming, but where frosted down every winter, such as here in Northcentral Florida, zone 8b, they bloom in late summer and early fall.

My white butterfly ginger is a variation with yellow spots called Hedychium coronarium variety 'Chrysoleucum.' The only difference is the bright yellow spots in the center of the white petals, and the flowers are slightly smaller.

Other growing information for white butterfly gingers: they prefer part shade to full sun--the more sun they get the more water they need. Try to strike a happy medium--enough sun to flower profusely, but not singe the leaves. Of course the further South you live, the more shade they need. They can succeed in shallow water or as a sub-tropical in the border. The tubers should only be just covered by soil, and they prefer a rich, moist soil. Our lecturer said he uses a balanced, slow release pellet fertilizer, as gingers do not need a special bloom fertilizer to bloom profusely. Be prepared to stake, as once the heavy flowers are in full bloom, the stalks tend to fall over. They spread, and are now considered an invasive pest in Hawaii.

Another white butterfly ginger variation is called 'Maximum.' I've only seen pictures, but the flowers appear quite large and white, with pale yellow stamens.

There is an explosion of interest in gingers in the plant trade, now that it's been discovered how hardy these tropical looking plants can be. Many people are scouring the tropics looking for more exotic species, and breeders and hybridizers have gone gung-ho, as it seems gingers are the new "hot thing." This strikes me as kind of funny, as the white butterfly ginger is listed as an old Southern "Heirloom" and "Pass-a-Long" plant that our grand mothers used to grow.

There are some especially lovely salmon and pink colored new cultivars in the Hedychiums, but be warned that named cultivars can be quite pricey! As I have the perfect climate for them in filtered sunlight under old oaks, with lots of rain, I imagine I won't be able to resist buying more--and more--and more, as time goes by!

I grew up in South Louisiana, where my mother has a back yard full of white ginger. It was planted under the canopy of a Pecan Tree.

When it was in bloom the whole neighborhood had the Gardenia-like smell everywhere. I have since moved to north-central Arkansas. I brought some with me and plant it in a large pot, bring it in for the winter. This past fall to early winter, it bloomed inside. Fond memories come back to me when I smell that sweet fragrance. My only concern is whether to fertilize. My mother has never fertilized hers, only the nutrients from the soil, but I fertilize mine with Miracle Gro (water-soluble fertilizer.)

According to the Philippine National Herbarium, Hedychium coronarium is rare here in the Philippines.

I have plants that are 6' tall.

Ginger Lily is a tropical perennial; the green stalks grow from a thick rhizome to a height of 2-4' feet. In autumn the stalks are topped with fragrant white flowers that resemble butterflies. The beautiful rich green foilage makes a great background for smaller plants.

A tropical plant, Hedychium coronarium can tolerate an occassional light freeze; frost will kill it to the ground, but it quickly comes back. It is a popular landscape plant throughout Florida and the Gulf Coast. It is also used in California, the Caribbean and tropical areas throughout the world.