Shot this unusual beauty at Chhota Kashmir (Film City) Mumbai on a cloudy Sunday afternoon. I came across this unsual flowering plant just when I wound up a 2 hour floral shoot and was on my way out. It was quite a task setting up my tripod in the slush & manually focusing at the longer end of my Sigma 70-300 APO DG Macro. It is amazing how nature presents itself with something as captivating as this when one doesn’t have any specific goal.
This plant is a Crepe Ginger, Botanical name: Costus speciosus, Family: Costaceae (Spiral Ginger family). It is known as Kusht or Keokanda in Hindi.
Despite its common name, crepe ginger is only a distant relative of the edible ginger family. It is a tall and dramatic landscape plant with large dark green leaves arranged on the stalk in a spiral. This Costus can grow to 10 ft tall in frost-free areas, but is typically small as a potted plant. The flowers appear in late summer or early fall, and are quite unusual looking. They form on red 4 in cone-shaped bracts, with several 2 in pure white crinkled flowers protruding from each cone. The flowers look like crepe paper - thus the common name of crepe ginger. After the flowers fade away, the attractive red cone-shaped bracts remain. The large crepy object is not the petal, but the stamen - the three true petals of each flower are inconspicuous, and are almost hidden by the bell shaped stamen. A very unusual flower indeed !
Canon 550 D, Sigma 70-300 mm APO DG Macro, AE, Av 8.0, Tv 1/80, ISO 400, FL 300 mm, Ev.Metering, EC 0, Manual Focus, CWB, Tripod, Full frame. C & C welcome please.
A humble request to our dear Moderators to kindly explore the possibilities of creating a flora category in the near future please. Thanks.
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