J.Koenig
Description
Hedychium coronarium is a robust ginger lily native to the eastern Himalaya and adjoining regions of South and Southeast Asia, including Nepal, Bhutan, northeastern India, and southern China. It has been widely introduced and naturalised throughout the tropics and subtropics, with GBIF recording over 12,600 occurrences from countries spanning South America, Central America, the Caribbean, East Asia, and Oceania. In its native Himalayan range, the species grows along stream margins, in moist ravines, on forest floors, and at the edges of subtropical and warm temperate forests, at elevations from 200 to 2,000 m. It thrives in humid, semi-shaded conditions with consistently moist soils.
The plant is a large, rhizomatous perennial herb, 1–2 m tall, with erect, cane-like pseudostems formed by tightly clasping leaf sheaths. Leaves are distichous, oblong-lanceolate, 30–60 cm long and 5–10 cm wide, acuminate, glabrous above, pubescent beneath, with a prominent midrib. The inflorescence is a dense, terminal, ellipsoid spike, 10–20 cm long, bearing numerous flowers subtended by large, green, imbricate bracts. Flowers are large and highly fragrant, with a white, deeply bilobed labellum 4–6 cm long forming the showy part of the flower. The lateral staminodes are petaloid, white, spatulate. The single fertile stamen bears a linear anther. The fruit is a trigonous capsule, orange when ripe, dehiscing to reveal numerous seeds enveloped in a red aril.
Hedychium coronarium is one of the most widely cultivated ornamental gingers in the world and is the national flower of Cuba, where it was introduced. In many tropical regions outside its native range, it has become invasive, forming dense monodominant stands along waterways that exclude native vegetation; it is listed as invasive in Hawaii, Brazil, and several Pacific islands. In its native Himalayan habitat, however, it is an ecologically integrated component of riparian and forest-edge communities. The genus Hedychium comprises approximately 80 species centred on the Sino-Himalayan region, and H. coronarium remains one of its most recognisable and taxonomically stable members.
Author: J.Koenig · Sources: POWO (Kew), GBIF, Wu & Larsen: Zingiberaceae in Flora of China Vol. 24, Grierson & Long: Flora of Bhutan Vol. 3