Pine cone ginger is named for its pink-green pine cone shaped flowers. The flowers appear mid to late summer, start out green and turn red. Small cream colored flowers appear on the cones. The flowers come out of the ground on their own stalks separate from the leaves. Blooming time is supposed to be fall so perhaps I’ll have some flower pictures to post here soon.
Foliage is variegated. Variegated varieties reach about 4′ tall, non-variegated about 7′ tall.
This ginger is easy to grow, clumping and propagated by division. Pine cone ginger is fast growing. It prefers moist soil don’t let it go totally dry. It prefers more sun than shade as do most variegated plants.
The milky substance in the flower cones is used in many shampoos. In medieval times ginger root was so loved it was set on the table nightly as we do with salt and pepper today.
This plant dropped about half its leaves when the weather first went under 40′ and the rest of them when we had the frost earlier this month. It dies back to the ground most, but not all winters here.
It will come back in the spring.
Keep the soil moist, it’ll survive a drought but not happily.
Survived the heat and drought of 2011, one of the few plants to bloom
This plant is much happier since I relocated it to a damper location, it receives some afternoon sun, but is mostly shaded by the nearby plants.
Herself's Plants 
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