FLIMBY: Ginger can flourish in Sacramento

This is another installment in our weekly series, Flowers in My Back Yard, devoted to blooming plants.

Every September, my backyard smells like a tropical paradise. That’s when the ginger comes into bloom.

These intensely fragrant perennials came with the house; they were originally planted by the former owners. The couple had lived in Hawaii and these familiar flowers were living reminders of their island home.

The white ginger were blooming when we moved in on Labor Day weekend, making an immediate and lasting impression. Now almost three decades later, they still bloom every Labor Day – and keep flowering all month long – sometimes well into October.

Sacramento has what ginger loves most – heat. That helps this tropical native thrive far north of the tropics. They’re a classic under-story plant, made to grow under trees. In our area, they prefer a spot in dappled shade or an eastern exposure with morning sun.

Packed with nectar, these flowers also are hummingbird magnets. They bloom in late summer and early fall, providing food after other flowers have faded away.

Ginger is a big family; Zingiberaceae includes about 50 genera and more than 1,500 species. Native to Asia, they all share certain characteristics: They grow from rhizomes, thick underground stems. (Bearded irises grow the same way.) Rhizomes are the part of ginger used in medicine and food.

The flowers come in a wide range of forms from delicate butterflies and feathery columns to colorful cups and lobster claws. But all appear from cone-like buds at the end of tall, green stems covered with attractive strappy leaves.

Almost all ginger species are used for something. The best known is true ginger (Zingiber officinale), the common cooking spice. Its orange flower is relatively understated compared to other gingers; that’s fine – it’s grown for its flavorful rhizomes.

And yes, you can grow your own true ginger in Sacramento. You can start with a knobby rhizome from the supermarket. (Choose organic ginger; others may be treated with growth retardant to prevent sprouting.) It’s grown and harvested as an annual, dug up in November or December after the stems have died down.

Turmeric (Curcuma longa), another popular ginger family herb, is grown the same way and harvested for its bright orange rhizomes in early winter.

Other widely used culinary gingers include galangal (popular in Southeast cuisines) and cardamon, which is grown for its large seed pod instead of rhizomes (the seeds are used in baking).

The real garden stars are the ornamental gingers. True to their nickname, they boast showy flowers with intense scents.

White ginger (Hedychium coronarium), also called butterfly ginger, may be the most fragrant. It’s the one that takes over my garden in late summer and early fall. The stems grow 4 to 6 feet tall, but their heavy flower heads tend to make them fall forward. The abundant pure white flowers attract bees as well as hummingbirds.