Alpinia luteocarpa

USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map

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This fragrant ginger looks like a dwarf bamboo bush. This Ginger boasts dark green leaves with red undersides. Bamboo Ginger is also a fragrant ginger that looks like a dwarf bamboo bush with a great clumping habit. Perfect patio container plant. Prefers some shade. Mature height of 2-3'. Reaches 2-3' and produces flowers.

The specific epithet luteocarpa means yellow fruit.

Amaryllis belladonna, Callicore rosea

The large clusters of scented, trumpet-shaped pink or white flowers are carried on a long purplish-red and green stem appearing 50cm above the soil. Up to twelve flowers are produced from the flowering stem. These flowers are 10cm long and apically flare open about 8cm. The inflorescence tends to face the direction that receives the most sun.

The strap-like leaves are deciduous and are produced after flowering.

Amorphophallus konjac

Amorphophallus konjac (Voodoo Lily) is a small plant growing 2 to 5 ft tall. Its flower has unusual color is white and purple. The flower is pollinated by flies that find its odor of rotting meat attractive.

It grows a single, elongated stem called a corm and a single large leaf that wraps around it. The corm is the part of the plant that is used, as well as its tuber, which is commonly called the Konnyaku potato. It is one of the most exotic, bizarre flowers. The single leaf dormant in winter, then in spring the plant shoots out a fantastic flower. The tubers of the plant, Konnyaku potatoes, are edible when cooked like a potato and are often dried and ground into a flour used in noodles and tofu. It is also used in traditional ethnomedical practices. It can be grown in USDA Zone 8-11.

Amorphophallus paeoniifolius

The unpleasant smell that the flower omits is only present for a few hours after the flower opens. If the flower is pollinated (normally by flies if the plant is outside) it will take 1 year for the plant to mature its seeds. The seed stalk is very pretty with the seeds changing colors from green to red. During this time the tuber will not produce a leaf.

The young leaves, stems, and corms are as vegetables or turned into desserts. They are thoroughly cooked to destroy the stinging oxalate crystals.

Anchomanes difformis, Amorphophallus difformis

This is the most unusual aroid, distantly related to Amorphophallus. Growing from a horizontal tuber that can measure up to 30" long by 10" across, the plant produces one huge, much-divided leaf with a stout prickly stem.

Originated from the jungles of Benin, along the west coast of Africa. The indigenous people there use the species for a variety of medicinal properties.

These unusual plants grow from a thick, slowly growing tuber, often branching, which creeps horizontally just below the soil surface. The compound leaves are up to 30 inches tall and are supported on slender spotted stems with very rose-like thorns. The fascinating leaves are an enlogated bi-lobed bat shape, often with fenestrations (window holes).

Dormant all winter when they should be kept cooler but not cold, and the soil only occasionally lightly watered until spring. Upon warming weather, they should receive abundant water and bright light, but with no strong sunlight, as this is a jungle species. Often, but not every year, they begin growth with a tall, slender flower spike which may or may not self-pollinate and eventually produce a cluster of white berries which eventually turn voilet-purple when ripe and ready for planting. Germination takes several months, usually in spring of the following year. In Florida, they need only to be planted in the ground, and can then pretty much take care of themselves, although they grow equally well in pots. When in active growth, they want abundant water.