Zingiberaceae

Just outside of Chiang Mai, a ways on up the mountain past the elephant camps, up where things are misty and cool, that's where I met up and fell in love with the zingiberaceae. Today was a rainy monsoon kind of day so we decided to explore the greenhouses of Queen Sirikit's Botanic Garden. We treated ourselves to a private driver in an air conditioned van,for a change. Leaving town the scenery is lovely, dense green forest with the occasional mountain stream cascading alongside the road.
The grand entrance to the gardens soon gives way to quiet winding roads, trails leading off into the woods to some hidden jewel of a view. Since it was so misty we did not get to explore all we would have liked and we were certainly longing to see what was just around the bend.




There's Barb with her umbrella not being stopped by a little rain!











This plant seemed to be hosting a colony of spiders judging from the number of webs!


Cup shaped webs catching the mists looked like little baskets of jewels (oh my! I'm waxing poetic today aren't I?). That could be a haiku!


Next we proceeded to the several glass houses featuring specialties like water lily



Orchids


Ferns





Just all kinds of plants arranged with water features and other decorative elements.


We cruised through several different houses. The variety was astounding.



Mom, this Dutchman's pipe reminded me of the ones you grew!





Bromeliads galore including this stump covered with Spanish moss.







The Zingiberaceae plants were varieties of ginger! Wow! They were amazing!


















This one is my favorite, the beehive ginger. You can't tell from the picture but the flowers are about a foot long and at least as big around as a cob of corn.






I got the picture below from google. It shows how the flower interacts with the butterflies. So cool!


If you can believe it, they even had two desert plant rooms.












A nice girl from Thailand took our picture.


Then it really started raining so we hightailed it up to the open air restaurant for some stir fry with a view.



We were so reluctant to leave because we had yet to see the glass house full of carnivorous plants (how could I have missed that! Argh!) and the museum and the trail to the waterfall, but alas, it was pouring rain by this time and we were getting soaked, even with our umbrellas. We may have to go back because it is a fantastic, stunning, beautiful place. Loved it!
By the way, bonus points to anybody who can pronounce Zingiberaceae!

Location:Chiang Mai