Curcuma – The Resurrection Plant
It’s pretty rare that I write up something about cultivated plants – the banana being a notable exception – because my main focus is on learning the plants of the savanna. However, there’s one cultivated plant that I’ve been curious about ever since we moved here.
A well-traveled acquaintance said in those early days that she’d never seen this plant anywhere except in Panama. I thought at the time that maybe it was a native plant, but I’ve learned that’s not so, and that it does occur in places other than Panama. But it wasn’t until our friend Carla (of Heliconia fame) was visiting recently and made a reference to the scientific name of the plant that I thought I’d better look into it a little further.
It shoots up like this at the end of the dry season, and later the leaves come up out of the ground – they’re not attached to the original stalks. Our Panamanian friends call it the “Resurrection Plant.” I’m not sure, but maybe that’s because it often comes up around Easter time.
It is a member of the Ginger family – the Zingiberaceae – and is in the same genus, Curcuma, as the plant that produces turmeric. Dave’s Botanary tells me that the genus name Curcuma comes from the Arabic kurkum, meaning saffron. Now saffron comes from a crocus, which is not even a member of the ginger family, so this is a bit of a blind alley, and I don’t know what to make of it.
Wikipedia has this to say about the genus:
Curcuma is a genus of about 80 accepted species in the plant family Zingiberaceae that contains such species as turmeric and Siam Tulip. Since assembly of the genus Curcuma by Linnaeus in 1753 about 130 species have been described so far. Some of the species descriptions are without Latin diagnosis or type specimen, therefore the legitimate status of many species is suspicious and remains unclear.
I tried for awhile to track down the species name for our Panamanian Curcuma, even though the above paragraph was a little discouraging. A cultivar is given the botanical name Curcuma ‘Panama Purple’ at Gingers R Us, but it seems to be a collected Curcuma zedoaria, as far as I can piece together from some information from a friend of Carla’s and from the Gingers R Us web site.
In fact, so little is known about the distribution of Curcuma zedoaria that the map from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility shows only one location in Florida and another in Indonesia (squint tight and look for tiny yellow dots).
The species name zedoaria is a Latinized form of ancient Perisan name for this herb – zedoary – which is a bitter spice plant sometimes used in Thai cooking. Curcuma zedoaria is also known as “white turmeric” in India where it is considered a weed. However its rhizome has a smell similar to turmeric and mango and has many medicinal uses in India.
The yellow flower appears within the purple or green bracts of the shoot. I’ve read that Curcumas are insect-pollinated, but nearly every day when I look out the kitchen window I see a hummingbird exploring the flowers (I never have my camera, of course!). The plant certainly has the right colors for hummingbird pollination, but I’ve found no reference to such anywhere on the web.
As an ornamental, Curcumas are grown for their foliage. I mentioned earlier that the leaves emerge after the flowers do. Here comes the first leaf in the stand I see out the kitchen window:
It has a nice purple midrib, which is one of its appeals as a foliage plant. Later on, the leaves take over the stand:
You can just see the flowers peaking out from beneath the leaves. Sometimes you can’t see them at all, hence the common name for Curcumas – “hidden ginger.”
Although Curcumas are grown for their foliage, the foliage does die back every year. By the time the foliage dies back the flowers are long since gone. Perhaps this year I will take it upon myself to track the flowers and see just exactly how long they do last under that forest of leaves.
Nice informative post about this commonly seen plant. I’m always impressed by how tough this plant is, and the fact that it seems to grow everywhere around here. Love the fact that it naturalizes so easily! Great way to fill in some difficult spots.
Turmeric is often used as a coloring substitute for saffron, because it is much cheaper, but similarly “golden” (s.l.). The flavor of course is not comparable.
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Kristen Albrecht Llamas’s “Tropical Flowering Plants” indicates that the curcuma zedoaria is a native of India. She writes that it grows in zones 8-11 but notes: “Prefers the longer dormancy period at the cooler end of its range.”
Thanks for the information, Bonnie. It’s interesting that the people of India consider it a weed, but then, in many places the native plants are taken for granted, aren’t they?
Maybe I didn’t make it clear, but I’m not absolutely certain that our Panamanian Curcuma is really C. zedoaria. That’s just the closest I could come to an identification. Whether it’s C. zedoaria or some cultivar of that species or something else all together, it does seem to do quite well in Panama, at least in our area.
i have a curcuma plant can i leave it outside. in the summer thank you
Hello Brigida,
I’m sorry, but I do not know anything about curcuma’s requirements in a garden outside the tropics. You might try Dave’s Garden. You can ask them a gardening question and someone will likely know the answer!
Good luck.
Mary
I just found a curcuma plant on my farm that I recently bought. Its a beautiful flower. I thought it was something special but its seems pretty common.
I know nothing about flowers. I live on a farm in the middle of colombia 1000m asl, 25 degrees and sunny all year round and lots of rain in the afternoons.
I would love to get more of these flowers, how can I encourage it to breed
Hi Shaun,
You probably don’t need to do anything special to encourage these flowers to breed. They seem to do it on their own! They are bulb plants. You’ll see at the end of the foliage season that the leaves start to turn yellow and droop. You can at that point cut the leaves back. If you dig around a little, you’ll see the bulbs. Take some and plant them elsewhere. Then you’ll have the Curcuma reproducing at its original spot and also putting up new flowers at the new spot. If you don’t do this, you’ll find your original bed will just expand and expand and expand. Either way is fine.
Enjoy!
Mary
Am sure it is native plant of India and based on pictures (Flowers (pinkish) and purple mid-rib), it is called “Curcuma Caesia” or “Black Turmeric” and widely used Indian Medicinal Herb for several uses. You couldn’t post picture of its Rhizome, if so we can identify the plant very easily. You please check out its Rhizome, it is Bluish Black, smells like Pungent because of Camphor’s % in rhizome.