If the White Ginger is the most romantic of this group of plants, the Torch Ginger is the most magnificent and spectacular. The plant is a clump of tall bamboo-like stalks, fifteen feet high, carrying large leaf blades. There are two varieties red and pink, the one with red flowers having bronzy leaves, while the pink has bright green leaves. Under this clump, in spring, seeming almost like an independent plant, pushes up the large flower stalk. It grows from three to six feet tall and carries no leaves, but at the end develops the head which is one of the most showy things in the flower world.
It is a waxen cone made up of innumerable bracts, pink or red, around which is a frill-like involucre of the same colors. The head is most attractive before the small, inconspicuous flowers begin to appear from behind the bracts, making them rather ragged. The general form of the flower head suggests a formalized torch. The flowers lend themselves to arrangements that can be almost monumental.
Torch ginger is a native of the Netherlands East Indies. ([Plate XIV])
Chapter VIII
SPECIAL TROPICAL FLOWERS
Many plants grow out of doors in Hawaii which are only seen in greenhouses in cooler climates. These include Orchids, which often make purple cascades from baskets hanging on trees, and other kinds which grow in the ground. In Hawaii, however, as in other places, the finer collections of Orchids are grown in greenhouses. This is not for warmth, since the walls of these houses are partly of wire screening, but to protect the plants from rain, wind and insects. The best plants of the island Orchid collections are usually displayed twice a year, at spring and autumn shows in the Honolulu Academy of Arts, where anyone interested may view them.
Plants which appear particularly tropical and exotic are those with large, lush, leaves and strange colorful flowers. Such plants do not require growing conditions any more tropical than do other things listed in previous chapters, but they look as if they did and are here grouped together. The ones selected for description do not exhaust the list by any means, but they are, perhaps, the ones most frequently seen.
A good collection of tropical exotics grows in the greenhouse at the Foster Gardens, a city park open to the public.
SPIDER LILIES
Crinum species
In Hawaii the name of Spider Lily is given to a number of liliaceous plants which have similar flowers, that is, with six, thin, spidery petals and six stamens. By a stretch of the imagination these flowers might be thought of as giant white spiders. The botany of these lilies is much confused and the local ones have never been satisfactorily straightened out. But there are at least three groups covered by the popular name, the chief one being Crinum. Others are Hymenocallis and Pancratium. All are members of the Amaryllis family.