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Roscoea auriculata is a hardy perennial ginger from the eastern Himalayas, grown for its purple flowers in summer. It dies back to a rhizome each year and suits a cool, partly shaded rock garden with moist but well-drained soil.
Roscoea auriculata is a perennial herbaceous plant occurring in the eastern Himalayas, in Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim. Most members of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae), to which it belongs, are tropical, but R. auriculata, like other species of Roscoea, grows in much colder mountainous regions. It is sometimes grown as an ornamental plant in gardens.
Jill Cowley notes that R. auriculata has been grown in gardens "for many years" under the name of a different species, R. purpurea. She provides a number of distinguishing features, which include the auriculate nature of the leaves, the bright purple colour of the flowers rather than the paler colours of R. purpurea, the relatively shorter white lateral staminodes of R. auriculata, and the latter's deflexed (bent back) labellum.
R. auriculata, like other Roscoea species and cultivars, is often grown in rock gardens. Plants generally require a relatively sunny position with moisture-retaining but well-drained soil. As they do not appear above ground until late spring or even early summer, they escape frost damage in regions where subzero temperatures occur. R. auriculata has been described as one of the "most commonly grown and easy species". When grown at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, it was given a position which was sunny in the morning but shaded in the afternoon; it should not be planted in full sun or in too hot a position.
Roscoea auriculata occurs in grasslands, between 2,400 and 2,700 metres in the Himalayan mountains of Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim.
Roscoea cautleoides · Roscoea forrestii · Roscoea humeana · Kakoli Ginger · Roscoea wardii
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Roscoea auriculata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
