''Alpinia hylandii'' is a plant in the ginger family

Zingiberaceae Zingiberaceae () or the ginger family is a family of flowering plants made up of about 50 genera with a total of about 1600 known species of aromatic perennial herbs with creeping horizontal or tuberous rhizomes distributed throughout tropical ...

endemic to

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. It is a herbaceous shrub which grows to about 1 m high, and like many other gingers the true stems are underground and only the branches appear above ground. It has glossy leaves up to 16 cm long by 2.5 cm wide. Colourful pink and yellow flowers are produced in clusters at the ends of the branches, and are followed by , blue,

capsular In botany, a capsule is a type of simple, dry, though rarely fleshy dehiscent fruit produced by many species of angiosperms (flowering plants). Origins and structure The capsule (Latin: ''capsula'', small box) is derived from a compound (mult ...

fruit containing numerous seeds.

Taxonomy

The slender ginger was first described by the Scottish botanist and ginger specialist

Rosemary Margaret Smith Rosemary Margaret Smith (1933–2004) was a Scottish botanist and illustrator who specialized in the taxonomy of the Zingiberaceae, or ginger family. Many of the species she classified and identified as being placed into improper genera were fou ...

, who published it in the journal '' Notes from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh'' in 1980.

Conservation

This species has been assessed as

near threatened A near-threatened species is a species which has been Conservation status, categorized as "Near Threatened" (NT) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as that may be vulnerable to Endangered species, endangerment in the ne ...

under the Queensland Government's

Nature Conservation Act The ''Nature Conservation Act 1992'' is an act of the Parliament of Queensland, Australia, that, together with subordinate legislation, provides for the legislative protection of Queensland's threatened biota. As originally published, it prov ...

Gallery

File:Alpinia-hylandii-SF24166-03.jpg, Branch and foliage File:Alpinia-hylandii-SF24166-02.jpg, Leaves File:Alpinia hylandii ALA1.jpg, Fruit

References

External links

View a map
of herbarium collections of this species at the

Australasian Virtual Herbarium The ''Australasian Virtual Herbarium'' (AVH) is an online resource that allows access to plant specimen data held by various Australian and New Zealand herbaria. It is part of the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), and was formed by the amalgama ...

View observations
of this species on

iNaturalist iNaturalist is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit social network of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists built on the concept of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity across the globe. iNaturalist may be accessed via its web ...

View images
of this species on Flickriver.com {{Taxonbar, from=Q15319074 hylandii Endemic flora of Queensland Taxa named by Rosemary Margaret Smith Plants described in 1980