I’m so glad I spent time photographing wild ginger a couple weeks ago, now that I’m nursing a broken foot that’s preventing me from a deep exploration of my garden. I’ve been looking through those photos plus a few I found from last year.
The wild ginger stands out in my garden, before its neighboring summer-blooming flowers have started appearing.
This woodland plant has beautiful, heart-shaped leaves.
Landscapers say this is an excellent groundcover. It spreads, but not too quickly.
This spot in my garden has roughly tripled in size in six years.
Every year I see people comment on Instagram that they didn’t realize these plants have flowers. They hide really well!
The flowers are weird and wonderful.
They’re close to the ground, sometimes even resting on the ground, which makes them attractive to ants that carry the seeds to new areas. The dark color and bad smell (which I cannot vouch for) apparently attract flies that pollinate the flowers.
The leaves start out lying flat.
Then the leaves pop up and the flower appears — like a sea creature poking out of its shell.
Within a couple days, the leaves are fully grown. Sometimes they look like a pair of antennas.
New plants apparently start out as teeny-tiny replicas. I’ll have to watch these next year to see if they’re “oldies” that will flower.
crystallofolia 