as best i can tell it is C. roscoeana. There is no such thing as C. alimanda. I know agristarts is selling this, don't know where they got the name. It sounds like a corruption of C. alismatifolia.. maybe somebody got their tags screwed up. The picture that is floating around is of C. roscoeana though.

Tim Chapman

Thanks Tim! I thought the picture they had on their website looked quite a bit like C. roscoeana, but I had no way of knowing for sure. Thanks for clearing up the confusion for me.: )

Amy

Curcuma alimanda is NOT Curcuma roscoeana. I picked up a C. roscoeana today, and the stems(petioles? right word?) are solid green. C. alimanda has dull reddish stems, and the leaves don't seem to be as narrow as C. roscoeana.

Any other guesses as to what the correct name might be? Anyone??? : )

Amy

I have C. roscoeana with red stems, I have C. roscoeana with green stems, I have orangish ones, reddish ones, some with fewer bracts, some with many bracts. There are some with solid white bracts etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. There are probably now two clones in tissue culture, and many of the imported rhizomes coming out of thailand are/were wild collected so the variability is wide. The original TC'ed C. roscoeana is not nearly as nice as the imported varities (the photo of 'alimanda' looks like one of these newer ones). Minor variations in leaf size, stem color, etc. are not enough to make some a different species. Natural variations in the gingers can be tremendous.

Tim Chapman

Wow, I stand corrected. I did not realize how variable this species is...and yet they're all still called C. roscoeana?

Amy

It is not just this species, but nearly ALL species have minor variations when propagated by seed or when collected from the wild. As Tim explained, we get accustomed to seeing identical clones of a particular plant that has been asexually propagated, and then expect all plants by that name to look identical! Just as there are many different-looking Homo sapiens, there are many variations of plants that are still artificially but correctly classified to be within the same species. Unless you know which characters distinguish the species. you can easily be fooled by plants that LOOK very different but whose important characters fit the botanical description of that species.