Flower Photo: Red Tower Ginger (Costus comosus)

Blooming at the Hydrangea Festival

 

Here's another plant the camera captured in the hills of Izena yesterday.

They were blossoming right at the entrance to a shed where you can get refreshments.

After grabbing a quick cup of coffee, I turned my back on all the hydrangea flowers and shot this.

Also known as Spiral Ginger, they are natives of Central and South America.

Still recovering from a wicked cold, I'll just give some links to more information on these beauties.

For medicinal purposes, if you know anyone suffering from gonorrhea, send them here:

National Tropical Botanical Garden

In the USA plenty of people grow them as ornamental plants and talk about them at:

Dave's Garden

Down in Australia there's a guy who knows all about these gingers.  He says they are even edible:

ABC Network Gardening Australia

Friends, who say "See Catherine of Alexandria for the man named Costus often held to be her father":

At Wikipedia, might like you to visit them, too.

It's always fun discovering plants and flowers found on Okinawa and getting them identified for you.

With the Red Tower Ginger, out of my way, I only have a few thousand more left to do !

Flower Photo: The Red Tower or Spiral Ginger

This is one of the things I really enjoy about getting lost on Okinawa.

While that Map It Okinawa guy is checking out every trail, or making his own,

I kinda pretend I'm resting in the shade.

And fool around with the settings on my camera.

Not having any clue as to what these red and yellow flowers were, I shot a few.

See, I know lots of folks come here to see flowers and ferns.

There are plenty of websites I have bookmarked to help identify Okinawa's flowers.

This one had me stumped, though.

It wasn't on any of the sites I checked, over the last three hours.  Groan.

So, I Googled "Red and Yellow Pine cone-shaped flower."

BINGO !

The University of Connecticut tells me they are Costus barbatus.

Common name, Red Tower or Spiral Tower.

Taking my search a little bit further, I found even more information for you.

Over at Some Magnetic Island Plants, I found out you can eat the yellow flowers.

Both sites will tell you these plants came from Costa Rica.

Now I feel a lot better.  People aren't the only things that get lost on Okinawa.

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