These pages are dedicated to the ornamental cultivation of plants commonly known as "gingers". Gingers are wonderful garden plants for the Southern United States and other parts of the world with warm humid climates. Many can also be grown in pots, lifted and overwintered indoors, or grown in conservatories in areas where the winter temperatures are too cold for year round outdoor ginger growing. (See tips on cold climate ginger growing.) Gingers include tall plants, short plants, plants with ornate foliage and sweet fragrance, plants for the sun and plants for the shade. Flower colors range from soft lavender blue to bright red and orange, pink, purple, yellow, gold, white - nearly every color on the chart. Most gingers like moist, fertile, organic soils, but a few are epiphytes. I am including on this website plants in the family Costaceae (spiral gingers) as well as the true gingers in the family Zingiberaceae.

On-line catalog and shopping cart system on GingersRus.com. Over 150 different gingers listed. CLICK HERE to see what is available. SEARCH THIS SITE - To search just the image files on this website, use the COMPREHENSIVE IMAGE SEARCH to search by image file name, the date of the photograph, the author and location, or the notes about the photo. or you may run a QUICK SEARCH of the botanical names. To search the entire database for synonyms, common names, image files and other data that may be included in the notes, use the FULL SEARCH function. PHOTOS UPDATED January 30, 2007 - New Costus photos from Hawaii - Lyon Arboretum, Waimea Audubon Ctr and the National Tropical Botanic Garden. Also new photos of Costa Rican Costus species have been added to the website - taken during my 2006 trips into the rainforest. There are now over 4000 photos of gingers on this site, with dynamically created thumbnail preview pages and full screen (800 by 600 pixel) image files. Go to http://www.gingersrus.com/images/Gingers to start browsing the ginger thumbnail pages. (URL's are case sensitive. Other non-ginger plant families are no longer included on this website.). NEW Oct. 24, 2006 - Propagation of Gingers - Ceil Dow wrote an excellent series of articles on dividing gingers and propagating Costus from cuttings for the Mercer Arboretum and Botanical Garden 2005 Ginger Workshop. With her kind permission they are reproduced HERE. March 5, 2006 - RECLASSIFICATION OF COSTACEAE - The genus Costus has been split into four genera. Some Costus species have been moved to Chamaecostus, Cheilocostus, or Paracostus. To read more about it, CLICK HERE. I have begun the process of updating this website to reflect the new nomenclature. December 14, 2003 - Download Mobile DB files for your PDA - Data from the GingersRus database has been formated to a .pdb file for use on Palm Zire, Sony Clié and other handheld devices. For further details, CLICK HERE. November 2002 - Dave builds a greenhouse. See the photo journal of the entire process of building a new greenhouse at http://www.gingersrus.com/Greenhouse August 1, 2002 - A website dedicated to the THIRD SYMPOSIUM ON ZINGIBERACEAE, held at Khon Kaen, Thailand, July 7-12, 2002. For those who like to plan ahead..... THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON GINGERS will be held in China in the summer of 2009.

The easiest way to move around this website is to use the combo boxes to the left. The first combo box, "GinGenera", takes you to the lists of plants. There are separate plant lists for Alpinias, Costus, Curcumas, Globbas, Hedychiums, Kaempferias, Zingibers and Other genera. Use the little arrow to open the selection box and then click on the selection to change it, or click on "GinGenera" if your desired selection is already showing. Once the list is opened, you can click on a hyperlink to see images and descriptions of each plant.

I am also working on an identification key and botanical descriptions of plants in the family Costaceae. I have completed the botanical descriptions of many of the species of Costus, mainly based on the descriptions by Dr. P. J. M. Maas. To see this work in progress, CLICK HERE, or go to "CostusKey" on the first combo box. I am testing an interactive identification key that can be used to identify the species of a given plant. If you are interested in Costus, and would like to help me beta test this tool, please CONTACT ME.

The second combo box has all kinds of ginger sources. There are lists of mail order companies, nurseries, and wholesale growers where ginger plants and seeds can be purchased. Soon there will be a list of botanical gardens that have collections of gingers you can see.

The third combo box is for general information on gingers. There are links to other websites that have information about gingers and e-mail groups with ginger discussions. There are lists of books and other publications about gingers.

A new page (Sept. 20, 2001) has been added about fossilized gingers, thanks to a contribution by Ray Lampert of the Calgary Zoo and Botanical Gardens. Later, I plan to have sections with Frequently Asked Questions and a "Queries" page for the more difficult questions. There will be articles on growing, propagating and hybridizing gingers. There will be articles on the culinary and medicinal uses for gingers.


Copyright © 1999-2006 Dave Skinner