Etlingera pyramidosphaera Black Tulip

For gardeners who covet the drama of the torch gingers but work with a smaller space, Black Tulip is the answer. Etlingera pyramidosphaera cv Black Tulip is the most compact member of its family — reaching around two metres rather than the five or six of its larger relatives — and it uses every centimetre to considerable effect.

The foliage alone justifies growing it. Rich green on top, the leaves carry a deep purple reverse that flashes with every movement of air, lending the whole plant a warmth and depth of colour that few gingers can match. It is, even between flowering seasons, a plant worth looking at — the kind of considered foliage interest that landscape designers reach for when they want a planting to hold its own year-round.

Then come the flowers — basal blooms of an extraordinary deep chocolate tone, as unusual in colour as the name suggests, emerging from among the stems in spring and summer. There is nothing quite like them in the ginger family, and nothing quite like them in the tropical garden more broadly. Collectors find this one and don’t let it go.

Its compact habit makes it genuinely suitable for a large container, which opens it up to gardeners in the subtropics who want to overwinter it somewhere sheltered, and to those working with courtyard gardens or paved spaces where the larger torch gingers simply won’t fit. In the ground in the true tropics it builds steadily into an elegant, manageable clump that asks for very little beyond rich soil, generous moisture and the occasional appreciation.