Before it was formally described by Sirirugas and Newman in year 2000, this plant was already available in the horticulture trade and I could see rhizomes available in the internet in USA, albeit mislabelled as C. gracillima 'Candy Cane' or "Chocolate zebra". .It was originally found in Laos but was reported to be common in Ubon Ratchathani in Thailand as well.
I was glad that my unknown rhizome from Thailand turned out to be this neat species but the plant soon proved to be an unreliable bloomer in this climate. I got this plant the same year it was described and so far had only seen its bloom three or four times.
Genus Cucurma consists of about 80 species* of mid to small-sized gingers (Family Zingiberaceae). The tumeric spice comes from the root of one of these, Cucurma domestica. Thailand and India are hot spots for number of species (about 36-40) although I suspect many little-explored regions of Indo-China may hold a lot more than what we know now.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Cucurma rhabdota
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4 comments:
Wow - I like that a lot. My poor plants are not liking the deep artic type freeze here in the UK (nor me come to that). Look forward to your posts in 2009,
Hi, I am growing curcumas, but I have never seen this one. It is beautiful. The curcumas I grow are very floriferous, but they might be just ordinary ones so they are still beautiful flowers, very easy to grow.
This guy is one third the size of typical Cucurmas, a 4 inch pot will hold a few bulbs. It appears to be from the seasonal grassland where there is a cool dry period. So perhaps that's why the monotonous climate here is not good for them.
Just beautiful! Love all your photography and interesting plants.
Aiyana
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