Bang on schedule

Last year I posted some photos of our "false cardamom" (Alpinia nutans or Alpinia calcarata) which bloomed for the first time after 20 or so uneventful years in our garden.

At the time it occurred to me that this might be a once-in-every-20-year bloomer, but no, it's not. It's in flower again, and I think it's looking better this year, too.

The wonderful red-speckled golden mouths are much more colourful and prominent this year, while the white surrounds are almost pearlescent before they fade to a coppery brown. 

And there are more flower stalks this year, as well. 

It remains a mystery to me why this tropical plant has waited so many years to bloom for the first time, and is now blooming away right on schedule (almost to the day) like it has been doing it for years. It's on my list of questions to ask of the Great Gardener in the Sky, should I ever make it up there at the end of my brief term down here on Mother Earth.

A cardamom-flavoured surprise

When a surprise comes in the form of flowers, it's always a welcome one, and this week we have been watching a surprise floral show from a plant which has been in our garden almost as long as we have — that's 24 years — and has not flowered before.

Here it is, photographed this morning, our dwarf cardamom is in bloom. As far as my Googling tells me, this is known as Alpinia nutans, but I have also seen it listed as Alpinia calcarata. Either way it's an ornamental ginger with foliage strongly scented of cardamom. 

In fact, that's why I bought it in the first place. It came in a little pot and the label said "cardamom". Naively, I believed it was real cardamom for many years. The fact that it didn't set pods didn't bother me. I just thought I was too far south of the tropics for it to set pods. But no, the real answer, which I learned a few years ago, is that this plant is sometimes also called "false cardamom" (as well as dwarf cardamom). And so it will never ever set seed pods, because it's the wrong plant.

A week or two ago we got quite a surprise when we noticed that it was in flower towards the back of the clump, and that in a much handier position for photography, a new flower was rising vertically from one fan of tropical foliage. 

I love the way flowers form buds and slowly open, and our dwarf cardamom took about a week to go from this peek through the curtains to being fully open.

Yesterday morning it was almost there ...

And this morning, after some light overnight rain, it's a bit of a mess — not a textbook bloom by any means — but it's open and putting on a show.

Further back in the clump, up against the fence, there are a few other blooms, such as this easily visible one and the barely visible pointed spire of another new bloom just to the right.

It's a delightful mystery as to why this plant has decided to burst into multiple blooms now, after so many years of merely seeming to be a foliage plant. I can't think of anything I've done to make it flower, as I never fertilise the clump of foliage, nor do I ever water it. The only maintenance I perform is to cut it back, as it loves to spread, and its leaves often become brown, shredded at the edges and generally very scrappy looking. The new, young foliage is far more tropically lush and lovely to look at. But as for what made it decide to flower now, after so many years, I haven't a clue.

You can use the cardamom-flavoured leaves of this  dwarf cardamom plant in cooking. An Indian-Australian friend of ours has occasionally taken several leaves from it. She makes up milk-based sweets, which are then wrapped in the cardamom-flavoured leaves and steamed, to produce lovely dessert treats spiced gently with that cardamom scent.

The things you bring home sometimes

There's something about going to garden shows which a visit to a local nursery can never quite match. For one thing I love the crowds of people at a garden show. Not that I like crowds of people all that much at any time, but the incredibly varied variations on humanity wandering around a garden show are almost worth the price of admission itself. You don't see them on the streets that often, not in those numbers and that variety of shapes and styles. And they all have the vote!

And for another thing I love the unusual plants you can buy at garden shows. You never see these plants at your average garden centre. All the little specialist growers come out of the woodwork and lay their wares on tables, and fools like me willingly buy them. One of those "things that I brought home" is getting into full flowering stride now, so let's have a look.

This is one of the many forms of Costus barbatus, an ornamental ginger. This one is better known as the red tower ginger. As well as sending out a series of bright red petals, it's now sending out pointy yellow bonus blooms as well. According to those in the know, it will look like this for several weeks, maybe months more. Hope so.

It's certainly a dream residence for some of our tiny spiders, which have strung ultra-fine gossamer strings from floor to floor in their luxurious Red Tower Condo.

At the same garden show (Florafest at Kariong on the NSW Central Coast, in September) where I bought the red tower ginger, I also bought a Costa Flores ginger. This is also a form of Costus barbatus. So far all it has done is send up tropical looking foliage, but I'm keeping an eye on its progress. As tropical plants, these things take a while to get into the mood here in a warm-temperate Sydney summer, so it's not too late for it to go "traaa-daaaa" and lay on a bit of tropical razzle dazzle.

Should it send up a flower this season, this is what the plant label gleefully promises it will look like, which is spectacular. I love tropical plants, they're just so unrestrained in their approach to growing and flowering. None of this tasteful delicacy malarky. If they were a musical instrument, they'd be a brass band.

As Julie pointed out in a recent comment here in an earlier posting about these plants, I think I am growing them in the wrong spot. I didn't think it was too sunny, but the foliage is definitely showing signs of sunburn. So I guess they might have to be moved later on in 2011, after this summer has well and truly ended. In the meantime, I'm enjoying keeping an eye on these things which I brought home from the garden show.

Dream runs & trying again

Some little gardening projects come off just how you hoped, while with others your dreams are dashed just when you thought it was all going to be a success. When that happens, there's only one solution – try again! Down in the spot I call 'Coleus Corner' both little stories are playing out again this summer, but this time I'm hoping for two successes out of two attempts, rather than my one-all draw last summer. Let me explain...

First of all, the good news. Coleus Corner is up and growing again this year, a completely different bunch of leaf colours and patterns compared with last year, but nevertheless a happily tropical looking little splash of colour in a spot which had previously spent too many years being dusty old Dullsville.

Pictured above, for comparison, the coleus patch on February 10, 2008 (so helpful these digital camera file info thingys - they keep track of what I shot when much better than my memory could ever manage.) As you can see, the leaf colours and patterns are different compared with this year. If anything, last year's were better, and that's because this patch grew entirely from seed, while this year's patch was a mix of seed plus some seedlings to fill in a few gaps where this year's seed germination had been rather poor. Can't beat seed when you're looking for variety!

So, at least with the coleus patch I can simply note that it's working well again. However, deeper down in Coleus Corner, I'm nervously trying to prevent a repeat of last year's disaster with my ornamental gingers.

Here's a photo taken 10 minutes ago, with the dramatic flower spike opening out, ready to put on a show. These ginger flowers sit on top of 1.5-2m long canes. You can see the plant's broadish green leaves here, too, plus little red colourations where the leaves join the stems. From one plant I now have about seven canes coming up, and this is the most advanced of the flower spikes. Last year things got to this stage, and then one morning....

I came outside to discover oodles and oodles of caterpillar frass all over the flower stems. They'd had a great old feast overnight. Every flower had been munch totally, and I never saw a speck of flowering ginger – I still don't know what colour the flowers are! I hadn't realised that caterpillars would be a problem, but apparently there is one type of caterpillar which just loves munching on ginger plants.

So this year it's war! I'm using a new 'organic' spray that's said to control caterpillars, but after the miserable failure of the 'organic' fruit fly spray with my tomatoes (posted about in 'crop failure' recently here) I have a level of confidence somewhere between low and rock-bottom that I'll be seeing ginger flowers in the next few weeks.

There's only one option at this stage, and that's to hang in there. Sure, I'm visiting my ginger plants often and seeing if I can actually spot the little blighters, but so far I haven't seen anything untoward. The suspense is bearable, and the compensation of a cheery Coleus Corner putting on its quiet riot just a few feet away soothes all visits to that part of the garden. Somehow I think that despite my armed patrols, nature will simply take its course – hopefully this year by allowing these spectacular flowers to bloom!