Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations
Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.
Native range 6 botanical countries
| Region | TDWG code | Continent |
|---|---|---|
| Borneo | BOR | ASIA-TROPICAL |
| Jawa | JAW | |
| Lesser Sunda Is. | LSI | |
| Malaya | MLY | |
| Sumatera | SUM | |
| Thailand | THA |
Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.
Flowering 202 in flower of 217 examined
Peak flowering in Jan. Each bar is the share of Etlingera elatior observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 202 of 217 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.
Where it actually grows measured, from 2,022 observations
| Condition | 5th percentile | Median | 95th percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coldest month, mean daily low | 13.1 °C | 19.7 °C | 24.1 °C |
| Warmest month, mean daily high | 23.3 °C | 28.1 °C | 32.3 °C |
| Annual rainfall | 1,271 mm | 2,962 mm | 4,987 mm |
| Rainfall in the driest quarter | 40 mm | 326 mm | 1,014 mm |
It is not found anywhere that gets close to freezing. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 2,022 research-grade observations of Etlingera elatior that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.
This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.
Also published as 24 synonyms
A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.
- Achasma yunnanensis T.L.Wu & S.J.Chen
- Alpinia acrostachya Steud.
- Alpinia diracodes Loes.
- Alpinia elatior Jack
- Alpinia javanica (Blume) D.Dietr.
- Alpinia magnifica Roscoe
- Alpinia speciosa (Blume) D.Dietr.
- Amomum magnificum (Roscoe) Benth. ex B.D.Jacks.
- Bojeria magnifica (Roscoe) Raf.
- Cardamomum magnificum (Roscoe) Kuntze
- Cardamomum speciosum (Blume) Kuntze
- Diracodes javanica Blume
- Elettaria speciosa Blume
- Geanthus speciosus Reinw.
- Hornstedtia imperialis (Lindl.) Ridl.
- Nicolaia elatior (Jack) Horan.
- Nicolaia imperialis Horan.
- Nicolaia intermedia Valeton
- Nicolaia magnifica (Roscoe) K.Schum. ex Valeton
- Nicolaia speciosa (Blume) Horan.
- Phaeomeria imperialis Lindl.
- Phaeomeria magnifica (Roscoe) K.Schum.
- Phaeomeria magnifica Lindl.
- Phaeomeria speciosa (Blume) Koord.
Sourcesevery claim on this page
- World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
- iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
- Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
- Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.
We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.