Pine Cone Ginger is a very unique ginger. These gingers have healthy greenery with a different growth pattern from the butterfly gingers I grow. You can see in the above picture to the far left is greenery from a butterfly ginger. The leaf pattern is different from the pine cone gingers which dominate the rest of the picture. Pine Cone Ginger gets its name from the unusual flowers it produces. The flowers look like pine cones. They grow on stalks that come straight up out of the ground, they don't bloom on the top of the stalk like butterfly ginger. The cone stalks are shorter than the leaf stalks, so you have to search for them to see them. The cones have little yellow florets that sprout from the cone, see the picture below. Eventually the cones turn red, which makes them very popular with the florist trade. They contribute a very unusual and modern look to floral arrangements.
But what makes Pine Cone Gingers so unique is their history as an herb. The cones are filled with a soapy liquid. If you squeeze them, the juice gushes out. It has a very intense "soapy" smell too. The juice of the cones used to be (and still is by fans of natural products) used as a shampoo. Very interesting.
These gingers like deep shade. Some gingers don't mind a little morning sun, but pine cone gingers don't tolerate it well. I dug up these gingers from my home in Houston this spring, and they are thriving already.
After the little yellow florets are finished blooming the entire cone turns red. Striking.
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