Botanical Family · Zingiberales

Costaceae

Costus Family

7 speciesOrder Zingiberales7+ well-known plants

The Costaceae family (Costus Family) is a botanical family placed in the order Zingiberales. In the SASYA catalogue it spans 7 species across 2 genera. Its members are predominantly herbs. Well-represented genera include Costus and Hellenia. Several members are valued in traditional medicine. Familiar examples include Blood Red Spiral Costus, Spiral Ginger and Insulin Plant.

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Representative specimen · Costaceae

Key pattern

Aromatic rhizomatous herbs whose leaves spiral distinctively around a single unbranched stem, unlike true gingers which keep their leaves in two flat ranks; a single fertile stamen sits beside a large, showy, petal-like lip on a dense conical flower spike.

The spiral leaf arrangement around the stem is the single easiest way to tell this family apart from its close ginger-family relatives at a glance, even with no flower present.

Identify the species

Which Costaceae species is this?

Answer what you can see and narrow it down to a single Costaceae species.

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Flower ColorWhat color are the flowers?

Red

White

Yellow

Family identification method

To check whether a plant belongs to Costaceae, compare the leaf arrangement, leaf type, flower symmetry, fruit type, and one distinctive marker together. A single feature can mislead; the family pattern is the combination.

Learn the full family-identification method