Costus Lima

Attractive dazzling red bracts open out into bright yellow flowers. These are displayed at the tops of strong robust shoots with large, spiralling leaves, making an entrancing display. Thriving as evergreen plants outdoors in subtropical and tropical areas, they grow from large underground rhizomes, but can be grown outdoors in colder countries and USA Zones 7 to 11. But but where frosts occur, as with other gingers, they will be cut down to ground level and grow anew each year. They are also ideally suited as houseplants in bright locations, or grown in a pot in a conservatory or greenhouse, and as the plant is evergreen they can flower all the year round once established. Although the "spiral gingers" are so named, they are actually in the Costaceae family, and not the closely related Zingiberaceae, or true gingers family. In the wild they are native to Central and South American forests from Honduras to Venezuela and Ecuador, where they grow in the under storey of the rainforest.