Fascicularia bicolor var caniculata:
A Bromeliad (Pineapple family) from Chile, from a climate very similar to mine, which is unusual as most of them don't like rainy winters (much less frost). I have all sorts of interesting things from Chile in my garden. These are not survival necessities; these are just fun things that I accumulated during good times. So, these are for fun, but I am not encouraging anyone to spend time growing anything you can't eat.
Bromeliads are an interesting type of plant. Their ancestors probably came out of the deserts, although many of them now come from rainforest or cloudforest. They have an interesting trick they can do: on the backs of their leaves are millions of tiny scales. Those scales tend to attract atmospheric moisture--dew or rain. The plants absorb water directly from the moisture on their leaves. They can even feed from whatever minerals are dissolved in that moisture. Some of them are essentially rootless (the "Spanish Moss" of the southeastern USA for example). The most extreme forms are Tillandsias, which have roots that don't do much more than attach the plant to their perches; they don't grow in soil at all. I have 2 Bromeliads in my garden, and this one, Fascicularia, is capable of growing in soil although it probably prefers to grow in large forks of trees. It hails from the temperate rainforest of south-central Chile.
Hedychium densiflorum seedling derived from "Assam Orange"
The ancestors of the preceding were collected by Captain Kingdon Ward in Assam, India. It was grown in a greenhouse in Kew, England, for many years thereafter, until about the 1970s someone decided to try it outdoors and discovered that it is completely coldhardy in the UK.
Like many of its relations it is deliciously fragrant--if I recall correctly it smells something like orange blossom and jasmine. "Hedychium" is Greek for "fragrant snow". I always thought that was a good name for them. Hedychiums are in the same family (different genus) as culinary Ginger, Zingiber officionale. They are vaguely related to things like Heliconias, Bananas, Cannas, and on the other end, Orchids. Like orchids their reproductive organs are fused into a single column, which you can see clearly in the pictures. They are easier to grow than most Orchids, and in fact a few of them (Hedychium gardnerianum) are so prolific as to be declared weeds. Unfortunately, the flowers do not last long and they usually bloom only once per year.
Hedychium spicatum:
This one smells like Nutmeg.
Now you must hear the sad story behind it. I grew it from seed exported from Kashmir, India, by P. Kholi and company. It was probably one of the last batches of seed exported before the proprietor was shot dead by militants.
I have had this clump a long time. I grew it right out of college, under florescent bulbs, in a tiny University-District apartment I shared with my recent bride.
