Tag: pencil drawing

Leaf of the Day: Pummelo, Pumelo, Pomelo.. whatever

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When I was writing about the Contorted Orange the other day (here) I felt sure that Leu would have a Pummelo. They would just have to have a specimen of this very early citrus, and sure enough there it was, with many other varieties in the citrus garden and another “windfall” for me yesterday as one large fruit had fallen on the ground. It is huge. I have a picture of the fruit on the tree but also this one on a plate with a regular sized lemon and a pencil so you can see how absoutely enormous it is.

This one is the well named Goliath Pummelo, Citrus maxima, and to recap a little, it is one of the first 4 citrus fruits from which the modern varieties are descended. It is thought that the basic orange we all know and love, is a cross between this monster and a mandarin. Little and large makes medium I guess. It was considered more a curiosity than a good eating fruit and something of a talking point for tropical fruit displays. A tricky addition to Carmen Miranda’s topknots though!

Additionally, Wiki tells me that “The pomelo is also known as a shaddock, after an English sea captain, Captain Shaddock, who introduced the seed to the West Indies in the 17th century from the Malay Archipelago.”
I will, annoyingly, now remember this little bit of trivia, as I can’t get Tintin’s Captain Haddock out of my head.

But the leaves, the leaves are a nice surprise, not quite as simple as a normal citrus these have a winged part to the lower, a winged petiole to be exact.
A very worthy leaf of the day.

I had also forgotten that there was a pummelo in the “Amazing Rare Things” exhibition (see my other posts here), how could I ! Also a Buddha’s hand citrus which I wrote about before here.

Both are attributed to Vincenzo Leonardi 1621-c.1646 who was producing drawings for the collection of Cassiano dal Pozzo and provided illustrations for Giovanni Battist Ferrari’s “Hesperides” of 1646, a treatise on citrus cultivation. It is fascinating and the digitised version of the book is online here


You can see the slightly winged shape at the base of the leaf here but it is much more pronounced in my leaf from Leu.

The Pumello.


Pummelo, whole fruit and half …c1640

And Vincenzo’s drawing of the Buddhas Hand citron, known here as the “digitated lemon”.


Digitated Lemon …c 1640

There is something about these wonderful old images which some modern works lack..I feel we sometimes go for perfection rather than character, something I will try to keep in mind.

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Pummelo Leaf

Leaf of the Day: Mother and Daughter Croton

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I have spent most of the day working on my other blog which I may post tomorrow, but as a bit of light relief today I just had to draw these wonderfully strange leaves.
I stumbled upon them down in the jungly bits of Leu. They are from the bizarre Mother and Daughter Croton, I think the variety is Codiaeum Appendiculatum. You can see why it has this name, with the nodding small leaf sprouting from the top of the bigger leaf joined by the slender stalk. Where they join, is a slight funnel shape which is quite beautiful. You really need to hold one in your hand to appreciate it. The one I have painted is an almost black-green with deep red on the underside of the leaves, the young leaves are bright green. I am so taken with these I will probably draw them again.
It was only because I was looking at something else that I noticed this croton whose leaves, like so many other crotons and fancy leaved plants, really need to be seen in isolation and away from the muddle of the whole plant. I initially didn’t like crotons much but I am coming to admire them more and more. Their sheer variety is stunning. The previous posts re: crotons are here

The croton is so named because the seed looks like a tick and there have been a few insecty things around this week. One is the discovery of a new sort of aphid which was bought, preserved in amber, on Ebay for 20 pounds.

Another is a short piece on BBC Radio 4′ Great Lives about the extraordinarily talented Robert Hooke, whose Micrographia I have mentioned before here.
The introduction has David Attenborough reading Hooke’s description of a flea.
” the flea is adorned with a curiously polished suite of sable armor, neatly jointed.”
What a marvellous description. I think nowadays we have lost much of beauty of descriptive language just for the sake of brevity. It’s a shame.


Robert Hooke’s engraving of the Flea from Micrographia, from Stanford University here

You can listen via the BBC website here if you are interested. “Micrographia” was so important as it was the first book devoted entirely to the new science of microscopic observation, illustrated with Hooke’s own beautifully executed engravings. Can you imagine the impact of such a work in 1665?

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Mother and Daughter Croton

Leaf of the Day: Dragon Fruit

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It’s Monday and you may think that, as I have been head down and working hard, the approach of Hurricane Fay has passed me by. No indeed! We have the weather channel to hand and are laying in supplies. I bought a useful torch and some water today so I can keep on painting.
However I spent most of this morning packing up the assignment which was double wrapped and protected with extra layers of foamcore for its perilous journey to the UK and is now posted. Joy..

Meanwhile through all the angst of last week, the good dragon fruit have been sitting quietly in the fridge. It’s ten days now and they seem very little changed. They are odd things and, most interesting to me, they are the fruit of a cactus, Hylocereus undatus.


Photo from plantogram here

This strange and beautiful plant originates from Central America where it is also known also known as pithaya or pitahaya. It is referred to as a vining cactus which will twist its way through trees and over fences and can reach 20ft in length. It is this twisting green body which then sports these scaly red “heads” that gives the dragon fruit its name. It really does remind me of the beautiful ink paintings of the dragons appearing from mist in the old Japanese screens. I was so delighted to find this image from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts here .


Doan (Yamada Yorikiyo), Japanese Dragon, ink on paper, around 1560.
It must be one of my favourite dragon paintings. Somewhere I still have an old photocopy of this image, from at least 25 years ago when I was researching Japanese dragons and legends.

The cactus has huge and beautiful white flowers which can be over a foot in length but it is another night blooming species so unless you are an insomniac you are not likely to see one.


Developing fruit and flower from tradewindsfruit website here. They have some wonderful fruits.

The plant seems to be happy growing over fences or as trees in commercial orchards and also it looks very nice in pot!
I have cut one in half and not found it that exciting to eat. The one I have is the white pulp variety with millions of tiny black seeds.. the more beautiful one which I had in Nicaragua had flesh of a stunning dark magenta.

William Chow has written a book about dragon fruit and has a website here with some wonderful photos..this one really shows the plants in their full glory.

And this delightful photograph of a whole bundle of dragons is from
I love pithya.co here

You really do want there to be a legend about the dragon fruit don’t you? But it seems the only one, something to do with eating the dragon’s fire, was made up by some creative marketing people to enhance the fruit’s appeal. But I guess all legends have to start somewhere.

Frida Kahlo’s has painted dragon fruit..here is her painting “Pitahayas“.
Superficially it is a still life, but typically of Kahlo, there is an uneasy element in the shape of a little skeleton sitting on the adjacent rock holding a scythe. It is a surreal image and reminds me of the English artist Tristram Hillier, whose classic 1950’s illustrations for the old Shell guide books have the same disturbing feeling.


Frida Kahlo, Still Life: , 1938, oil on aluminum, 10 x 14 inches. Collection of Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

I quote from the Madison Museums description of the painting.

“In many respects, Kahlo’s depiction is realistic, even including two pitted rocks and round cactus to suggest the fruit’s habitat. But the artist takes liberties and makes certain decisions that give her still life its special meanings. First, these pitahayas are decomposing; the healthy yellow skin has over-ripened to a garish red-orange. The skins have burst open, and brown rot has set in. One has been sliced open to reveal what we would expect, the white flesh and black seeds. But the cuts are perfectly rounded rims. The sectioned fruits stare out with other-earthly eyes. Presiding over the fruits is a small seated skeleton who holds a scythe that identifies it as the grim reaper—death itself. This figure is a calavera. It is associated with El Dia de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), Mexico’s most popular holiday that commences for two days on November 1—All Saints Day in the Catholic liturgical calendar.
Kahlo’s still life is a meditation on death. Because of its watery freshness that can provide sustenance in the most barren of terrains, the pitahaya is known as the “fruit of the shipwrecked man.” But even this most life-giving of fruits is given to decay. If realistic in certain details, this still life is magical. “

Hmmm “the fruit of the shipwrecked man” I like that. A fruit, growing in the desert. A welcome and refreshing relief for a stranded traveller in a scorched and barren land. There must be a legend in there somewhere.
What have I done? Well so far a drawing. I do have a drawing ready to paint but tomorrow I have to spend a day on my other blog so maybe Wednesday..
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Dragon Fruit

Leaf of the day : The Air Potato Vine

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Todays drawing should really be accompanied by a wanted poster, as, despite its innocent appearance, this is a very bad plant and is high up on the invasive, to be dug out, to be got rid of at all costs and exterminated, plants in Florida. This is the Air-potato, Dioscorea bulbifera, also called potato-yam, air-yam, Chinese potato and is a member of the Yam family, Dioscoreaceae.
There are pages and pages of discussion about them on the Internet and I am now convinced that after drawing it I will have to destroy it (if I can). I must admit that when I first came to Florida I did notice that every upright structure, be it building, tree, or telegraph pole had some sort of vine either running up it, over it or hanging from it. Mostly it’s something called kudzu but it seems the air potato is also a main suspect. ( ‘plant of interest’ to be PC).
The air potato was brought to Florida as a possible agricultural crop early in the 1900’s from Africa where it is an important food source. However taking full advantage of the wet and fertile conditions this thing has multiplied alarmingly and is engulfing everything it comes across in a choking blanket, blotting out the light and scrambling 60 ft to the tops of the highest trees…It’s a problem.

The little warty tubers which the plant produces can spout even if only the size of a pea. They can float, fly, bounce, or otherwise travel and set up colonies anywhere. Naughty gardening squirrels like them to plant them and birds may scatter them. It is currently found in 23 counties in Florida and by the time I have finished this post is probably in 25 and still going.
It is a shame it’s such a nuisance, as the leaves are pretty and is a useful screening plant in areas where it is more controllable. (Think Russian Vine in UK)
Barry Rice, an Invasive Species Specialist’s says ..”Don’t plant it in your garden, don’t let your loved ones plant it, don’t let your friends plant it! “
One way of controlling them here is through organised potato vine roundups. Yee ha!

In nearby Gainsville, (and I quote from the the Gainsville Voice website here ),
“The previous eight Great Air Potato Roundups have been a tremendous success! To date, volunteers have removed more than 60 tons of air potato tubers from 30 nature parks, creeks and neighborhoods.”
Similar roundups are going on all over Florida and I wish them luck. I will do my bit everytime I see one of these pesky things growing, but from the amount I have now seen running amok, even down at carefully tended Leu Gardens, there is some way to go.
Meanwhile I am pondering what to do with my other two tubers, already looking eager to sprout… I could try cooking them but the fridge isn’t that empty yet, I could be artsy and make some potato prints, or I could just while away the afternoon making Mr Air Potato Heads…

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The Air Potato

Leaf of the Day: The Ginger Pod Again.

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I really wanted to draw this little pod in its new state. It has changed so much in the last week. It seems that the seeds inside have grown larger and are pushing outwards causing the pod to split in 3 places. Even since yesterday it has changed, the seeds are slightly bigger and less green. It is the pod of the shell ginger I had sketched a couple of times a few days ago here. The changes are interesting, the colour has gone from a brighter greeny orange to deeper orange and reds and of course the seeds pushing out have caused the shape to become more squashed. It’s fascinating. Sadly it fell off its stem which was pushed into some oasis so it had definitely lost some elegance, but it’s still lovely.

Another Friday has rushed round and I shall be taking some time off plants this weekend to return to some colour experiments and exercises. I have been trying to fit them in while doing everything else but as Fred Astaire said ‘somethin’s gotta give’. I enjoy colour and while the botanical illustration course is interesting it doesn’t allow at all for anything messy or experimental. The colour challenge with botanics is about seeing and matching colour as exactly as you can, and frankly I am getting in need of a bit of freedom so I will be doing some experiments this weekend. If the results are pleasing or even interesting I will post them. Many are not but such is the nature of experiments. Of course there may be a plant, seed pod, or leaf theme in there somewhere.
However, even if it is just coloured squares, as an artist, as long as you are actually doing something you have hope of progress. Many, including myself, would really rather just ‘imagine’ those leaps and strides we will make on our way to becoming the great artist we are doubtless destined to be, and go for a beer instead. There may be some fine displacement activity taking place this weekend too as I have to admit I got a bit of a taste for it on our last lazy weekend. The pool, the bar, the books, the DVD ‘s, general mooching … or the colour exercises. Hmmmm….right now the colour exercises are losing!
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Shell Ginger Pod 2

Leaf of the Day: The Curiously Beautiful Silky Hakea Pod and Some Firechasers

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In my work room I have a long table that houses my paints and my ever growing collection of twigs, pods, bits of branches, bark, seeds and the like. They generally sit there until I get round to drawing them and I tend to assume there won’t be much activity in that direction apart from the odd displaced ant wandering around. However, while I was away a few things were not so dormant as I had thought. Three seed pods have changed. The beautiful big green cone I had found has turned brown and is springing open from the bottom up and the little ginger seed head which I drew last week has split open to reveal pale green seeds and is now possibly even more lovely. But the biggest surprise is the woody pod of the Silky Hakea, Hakea sericea which has split in two, to reveal what is probably the most beautiful seed pod I have seen to date.
They are, of course, just doing what comes naturally, drying out and getting ready to shed their seeds.

I had seen these woody pods some time ago and thought they were some sort of gall, this one above looking like some strange perching bird. Last week I gathered one from the tree at Leu and taken a photo of the name tag. The Hakea is not a plant I am familiar with at all and, not having had time to look it up before we went away, I was totally unprepared for such an unprepossessing thing to open up and reveal something so beautiful. It has split along a sort of beaked ridge which runs down one side of this inch and a half long pod revealing two black winged seeds set into the sheer surfaces of two solid halves. When I say ‘set in’, it looks just as though the finest craftsman has set silky ebony shapes into a setting of two-tone creamy ivory. It is quite exquisite. The surface of each half is as smooth as smooth, a sharp contrast with the pods outer surface which is so rough and pitted. The pods are heavy and knobbly and, it would appear, impenetrable, but having read a bit about them now I realised why. This is one of those extraordinary plants that needs fire.

The whole subject of the ecology of the burnt landscape is fascinating. What we view with dismay as complete and utter devastation, will immediately be readjusting even before the last drifts of smoke have blown away and although it may seem an impossibility, some species of plants and animals are dependent on fire and do not thrive without it. Australian species of plants are particularly well adapted to fires, cypress cones and banksia seed pods open up with fire and so do the Hakea pods. Mallee eucalyptus trees have large underground roots known as lignotubers which enable them to regenerate after fires and many are able to grow new leaves and branches from burnt trunks.
There was not, mercifully, a fire in my work room but the Hakea also responds to ” damage” by going onto emergency regeneration mode and opening up its seed pods.
Fires then can be very useful, releasing seeds, removing competing plants, open up areas to more light, enriching the soil with ash and creating ideal growing conditions for some plants.

There is also a curious wood boring beetle, the black fire beetle, Melanophila acuminata that actually flies to the fires. Like some little heat seeking missile, they are able to detect fires from many miles away either by smell or by infrared heat sensitive areas located under their wings.


Great photo from German site here

Alerted and hot to trot they zoom off to the charcoal forest to meet and mate. Researcher Nathan Schiff who has been studying these pyrophillic insects describes the smoking remains of the fire as a heady “nightclub for bugs”.

They then lay their eggs under the bark of the burnt trees followed in hot pursuit by the little black backed woodpecker, another fire following creature, who will eat the beetles and grubs, camouflaged beautifully by its “charred” feathers.

Photo, bird call and head banging from the Cornell bird site here

My drawing has not really done this beautiful thing justice, and I will maybe try a colour version. You need to hold it in your hand to really appreciate the different surfaces textures and the subtle colours, in my eyes no jewellery designer could make anything more beautiful, give me a super Silky Hakea Pod over those gaudy Faberge eggs anyday.

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Silky Hakea Pod

Leaf of the Day: Greenbrier

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I have spent most of the day catching up and trying to identify a few bits of leaves that I brought back with me. I was so pleased to learn about some new plants especially the medicinal ones.
Today’s drawing is of the Greenbrier, part of the Smilax family. There are several species in the Cedar key area so I am not exactly sure which one this is. It forms a dense low growing twining scrambling prickly mass. The new shoot I have drawn has no thorns. The much older leaf has thorns on the edges of the leaf and along the underside of the central vein. Despite this, the tender young leaves are edible having a “nutty” flavour, and the tubers were a staple food for the native Americans in Florida.

“Smilax:
The young, tender roots were eaten after boiling or roasting. Starch was frequently extracted from older roots. They were chopped up, pounded, mixed with water and strained over a container. After a while the starch settled to the bottom. It was gathered by carefully pouring off the water and was then dried and ground into flour. Greenbrier starch is reddish in color. A small amount of it mixed with hot water produces a jelly to which honey can be added to improve taste. If more water is used, the mixture makes a pleasant drink. The starch can also be used a a soup thickener or mixed with cereal flour and made into cakes and breads.The roots themselves served to make the original root beer.
Greenbrier roots were called “contichatie” (red flour root) by Florida Indians, for whom it was an important food item. “

“The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America: Nature’s Green Feast”
I have recently come across this useful book which, I will be taking with me everywhere.

A type of sarsaparilla,(root beer) that can be made from the tubers of some species was widely drank as a tonic and had a curious reputation, unfounded it seems, as being a good cure for syphillis, so was the favoured drink of the cowboys after a night on the town. But that has worried me now because I am sure that “Sugarfoot” (oh dear ..how old do you have to be to remember that on the TV!) always drank it, so my girlish illusions of that particular romantic young cowboy are now shattered. What do you think girls?

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Greenbrier Leaves

Leaf of the Day: Cedar Key Cedar and Sharp Green Pencils..again.

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Sunday evening and we have returned, sun burnt and completely exhausted from 3 days on the Gulf coast. We dodged most of the rain, encountered some enormous sponges, learnt about scalloping, ate fabulous fish, saw some very interesting plants, met some very nice people, communed with some ancient spirits and our last day at Cedar Key was just heavenly. I will be retro posting blog entries with a few relevant details but we saw and did so much it would take me a week just to write it up.


Cedar Key Sunday morning

It’s funny how things come around though. At the very start of the blog I wrote about my favorite pencils, Faber Castell my lovely, elegant, sharp, racing green pencils, here and when I go away there is usually one somewhere in my bag with a small sketchbook. While in Cedar Key we took the excellent Captain Doug’s tour to see the outlying islands and some of the wonderful bird life. The boat trip took us to nearby Atsena Otie Key which was the site of the original town, called Cedar Key after the red cedar tree a type of juniper, which grew on the island. Captain Doug explained that the community was once much larger than the current 900 inhabitants, a thriving town and home in fact to one of Faber’s timber mills. I felt I should have jumped up brandishing the pencil I had in my bag but I didn’t.
In 1849, J. Eberhard Faber came to America looking for wood suitable for the booming pencil factory which his brother was running in Germany. This he found in abundance on Florida’s Gulf shores between the Suwannee and Withlacoochee Rivers so he bought both land and timber, floated logs to the Keys, and initially shipped logs over to the factory in Germany.

Planning to expand his pencil empire into America, in 1858 Faber built a slat mill on Atsena Otie and started shipping wooden slats to the newly opened Faber pencil factory in New York. The Eagle Pencil Company followed with their own mill in 1876. Helped by the newly developed first railroad which ran across from Cedar Key to the Atlantic coast the little town became an important port but on September 29, 1896 a powerful hurricane and a 10 foot tidal wave crossed the island, destroying the mills and almost all of the town. A year later the remaining inhabitants left, Atsena Otie was abandoned and a new community built up where Cedar Key is today.
On a short walk just outside the town along the disused railway line we found one of the cedars along with many other, well labeled, native plants. (Very useful for this blog.) The Seminole name for this particular red cedar (Juniperis silicicola) is atcina which gave the island Atsena Otie its name. The red cedar has beautiful aromatic wood which as well as pencils was used for making chests and wardrobes as moths dislike the smell. Juniper oil is distilled from the wood, twigs and leaves and its pretty dusty blue cones are known as berries and the European junipers cones are used to flavour gin.


One of the constantly watchful pelicans


Early morning at Cedar Key from the hotel room, opposite is Coconuts Bar and the fishing deck…very handy.

Cedar Key is just so beautiful with many natural places to explore and when your feet hurt and the bites are itching what could be better than chilling out on the fishing deck at Coconuts with a cool beer listening to some zydeco and watching the pelicans, the magnificent frigate birds, the little terns wheeling overhead. We did all that and we will do it all again soon I am sure…and we saw dolphins too.
More about Cedar Key from their website here

I did a quick drawing of a tiny piece of the cedar and thought it would be appropriate to add a photo of the pencils, the drawing and the model. The sprig is tiny and the drawing is enlarged x 3.

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Red Cedar Sprig

Leaf of the Day: Shampoo Ginger and a Hill

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This will be a brief post today. We have decided to go away for a couple of days to the coast, so a quick(ish) drawing of the inflorescence of the Shampoo Ginger Zingiber zerumbet which grows just outside the apartment here.

The flower cone sits on top of a long stem, this one is about 2ft. The little cream flowers grow from in between the “scales” or bracts of the cone. As I was drawing it, some drops of liquid appeared ..so I have drawn one of them. This may be the shampoo. I have yet to try it, but it is true that if you squeeze the cone gently you will be rewarded with a liquid which was used by the Polynesians for bathing both skin and hair. I can’t imagine anything nicer than a natural, ginger scented face wash. This then, and the soapberry are two handy additions to the bath and laundry departments.
In my case a few ants appeared too, which I didn’t think would add very much to the drawing today so I took them outside. Ants seem to cover most the blossoms of the gingers. I have had to shake some of them vigorously to get an ant free photo. Gingers are another example of ant friendly plants, offering nectar and shelter in the bracts in exchange for protection against malign insects.
At the moment this cone is green but, as the flowering phase begins to finish, it will turn red. I will probably return to it then for a colour sketch.

So I will not be posting any drawings until next week now unless torrential rain and the odd hurricane sweep the Gulf coast. We are going to Tarpon Springs a small Greek community north of Tampa, (I am so looking forward to some Greek food!) Here they used to dive for sponges and I am told there is still a small sponge industry.
We will go via Bok Tower gardens which will be a real treat! There we will see the beautiful gardens, the wonderful Gothic /Deco “singing tower” with a 60 bell carillon, and … a hill!


The view from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain Florida

Sugar Loaf Mountain nearby rises to a magnificent 312 ft above sea level. The second highest spot in Florida. My information is from a necessarily brief web page entitled “General Florida Climbing Information” here . I am looking forward to the view.
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Shampoo Ginger Cone.

Leaf of the Day: Shell Ginger Seed Pod, and some Thunderstorm Advice

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Today was the first day I have been caught in the rain. The weather changes in the blink of an eye here, one minute there is sun, the next it’s as black at night. Usually it rains after three but today at midday I was cycling for the last ten minutes in torrential rain, thunder and lightening, and trying to remember the thunderstorm advice which they give on the weather channel. One is to stay away from trees, which is quite hard in Winter Park, but if you happen to be in a wood to shelter under a small tree and if out in the open you should make yourself into a very small target by crouching down. I am already a pretty small target so being short does have one or two advantages then!
Before coming to Florida I had experienced torrential Central American rain which was the tail end of hurricane Katrina and, relatively gentle, European thunderstorms but having had one incident here with horizontal rain and a whirling demonic wind which tore through the open windows in the apartment and flattened everything in its path I take good heed of all advice and forecasts.
There is the 30/30 rule, which is to count the seconds between hearing the thunder and seeing the lightning. If it is 30 seconds or less, the lightning is close enough to be a threat so seeking shelter is very important. Also one should wait 30 minutes after the last lightening flash before venturing out as apparently half the deaths from lightening take place when you think the storm is over, it can strike up to 10 mile away from its source!

If you were ever to scoff at the time and trouble they go to here to ensure we are all informed, to the minute, about approaching storms, you should read about the devastation of Hurricane Charley which swept through Orlando in 2004…even Mouseland had to close!


Charley approaching downtown Orlando 2004 ..BBC website

There will never be another Hurricane “Charley” or “Katrina” because severe hurricanes have their names “retired”, their sombre associations and destruction consigned to memory. Other names get recycled. The naming of hurricanes is interesting. Pre 1953, hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint’s day on which they occurred but from 1953 the United States Nation’s weather services began using female names for storms. ( “hell hath no fury” I suppose) Only 25 years later did they try to redress the balance by bringing in men’s names. I am not sure who is next.. and we are not even half way through the season.

But back to gingers..there are many, many more gingers than I thought there were. I am beginning to be able to spot them now and they are everywhere. Today I was going to try to understand the classification but having spent a couple of hours now trying to find the definitive guide with no luck at all I realise it won’t be easy. Here are the main types, most of which I have seen and photographed at Leu.

Alpinas– Called the “shell” gingers due to the seashell like flowers. This one is Alpina zerumbet

Curcumas — these are known “hidden” gingers, as the flowers are tucked away in the leaves. This pretty one is called candy cane Curcuma rhabdota

Dichorisanda Not a true ginger but very similar. This is a the “Blue ginger”, Dichorisnada thyrsiflora

Elettarias — Known as Cardamon ginger. I have not seen one of these at the gardens yet.

Globbas — The dancing ladies, as I drew yesterday.

Hedychiums — Called “butterfly” gingers. This is the Luna moth ginger which I drew before and the orange pagoda shaped one is hedychium coccineum

Kaempferias— Called “peacock” gingers, pretty low lying plants with patterned leaves.

Zingibers— also known as cone gingers, including the beehive ginger Zingiber spectabile and the branch of the family containing the edible ginger Zingiber officialis.

The edible ginger is a much more modest plant but completely wonderful. Tomorrow more about ginger and gingerbread.

Another image from “gingersrus” ..great ginger site here !

They are all quite beautiful, and today I found this gorgeous little seed pod from the shell ginger.
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Shell Ginger Seed Pod