Globba Care Guide

Dancing Girl Ginger

In addition to the commoner and hardier ‘Gingers’; Hedychium and Cautleya, which Burncoose has grown for many years, we are now able to offer the rather more tender greenhouse ginger; Globba schomburgkii.

Despite being frost tender, it produces the most spectacular flowers even at a young age, and seems easier to get to flower than some of the other gingers which take a while to get to flowering size and sometimes have years off from flowering altogether, at least in pots. 

G. schomburgkii occurs widely in the wild in Yunnan, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam. It has vivid, bright green foliage and produces dainty racemes of densely packed yellow flowers. These are elaborate and intricate as they dangle down from the flowering racemes. Hence the common name for this plant. In the nursery we have found young plants flowering well before the normal ginger season of late summer or early autumn.

If you do plant this in a border you will need to lift the rhizomes in late autumn and bring them inside into a frost free environment in the winter. It is probably best to grow the rhizomes in pots in the greenhouse with plenty of humidity for most of the year or at least until they flower when they can make attractive house plants for a while.

Mature plants will produce bulbils from the base of the flowering racemes but the rhizomes can also be divided in winter when dormant.

(Images still needed)