This is where I planted the peacock ginger last year, so I can only guess this is it coming up now....but it's only the flowers that are emerging! Is this normal? No experience with these plants at all.

100% different than my 'White Butterfly' ginger, Kate. My stalks have to be around 6' tall and it will be mid-summer, before blooms begin. All my ginger are now breaking ground and I am shipping my first rhizomes out today in fact. This is the best time to dig and transplant or ship these rhizomes since you can tell how many shoots will come from a given rhizome and also tell which rhizomes won't sprout at all. Winter kills a few rhizomes every year.

Kaempferia pulchra and yes, the plant goes dormant, then the flowers emerge straight from the ground first, the (beautiful) foliage comes later. It gives rise to its other common name: 'Resurrection Lily'

In the same family as the Butterfly Ginger that Ken mentions but otherwise very different.

But, those flowers don't look like Peacock Ginger (Kaempferia pulchra)

Hum, they sure look different. Unfortunately, all I know is the ginger I grow, White Butterfly. Someone with more experience/knowledge with the Peacock will have to figure this all out.

That was a bad picture. Here...maybe this is better! Hard to get a good angle with all the other stuff growing around them.

Ken, is this the one you grow? Butterfly Ginger (Hedychium coronarium)

It's definitely a Kaempferia. Maybe a different species.

Maybe Aromatic Ginger (Kaempferia galanga) ?

A Google search turns up Kaempferia rotunda with blooms coming directly from the ground before the leaves grow, but the photos I found had lavender/purple on a bit more than half the bloom. Might be a white form here, though.

Yes, Lin. That's the only one I grow. I love the flower and its fragrance and the flowers are magnets for hummers and then in the fall, for sphinx moths.

It's very odd, Kate. The flowers look a lot like Ken's white ginger which is Hedychium coronarium, but mine need to grow long stalks with leaves before they flower, too. Are the flowers fragrant?

I also have Peacock Ginger and mine definitely put up their leaves first. Mine look like Lin's first link. But they're not putting up any leaves just yet. True divas that love the warm weather, and I'm expecting them to emerge any day now.

Suggest you give them a little bit of fert and a lot of water, and let us see what comes along in the way of leaves. (all my gingers love lots of water, btw)

Elaine, we definitely have the White Butterfly Ginger. Tall stalks, lots of large leaves, and then the flower "cones".

Yeah, and it's a whole different animal to the Peacock Ginger which is essentially a groundcover. The leaves on mine never get above about 6in.

That's why I'm puzzled that Kate's flowers look a lot like the White Butterfly. One explanation could be that the Hedychiums sometimes make proliferations (new plants) on the flower scapes so if she got a start of one of those, it could have had a flower that has stayed dormant until now. Very odd though, and she says it's Peacock, (Kaemferia) not butterfly (Hedychium).

I have never seen that on any of my White Butterflies, Elaine. Mine have always formed that tall stalk (some up to 8' tall) long before blooming.

We have a field of the Kaempferia currently at the Botanical Garden where I work and the flowers look just like Kate's, and are not on a stalk but directly on the ground. No leaves in sight. People ask about them all the time.

Ooo, I'd love to see a picture, Hetty - maybe next time you're there they will still be blooming?

here you go.

How cool!

They're really neat! That sure looks like what Kate has, too. Do they put up the pretty leaves later?