Beautiful weeds P.4: Globba marantina

Four or five years ago, a German friend then living on Mindoro gave me small plants of what he said was a species of Globba, from the ginger family. He said he found them on the wild. It did not look like our most common Globba species, G. campsophylla, so I was curious to see its flowers and determine what it could be. The following year, the plant grew mature enough to produce flowers, which I then identified as G. marantina. Suddenly I wasn't too ecstatic about the plant anymore.

Globba marantina is found in a large swathe of territory encompassing eastern Asia to the Bismarck Archipelago. However, because of its weedy nature, the wide distribution may only be artificial. Philippine plants for example, are interpreted as escapees, although seemingly highly localized. An indigenous Globba species with similarly colored flowers is G. aurea from the island of Palawan, with erect inflorescences.

Globba marantina honors Venetian physician and botanist Bartolomeo Maranti (1500-1571). His name also appears, this time as a generic name, on the very popular Maranta (Family Marantaceae), which are much esteemed as garden plants due to their attractively marked foliage.

This large plant of G. marantina has practically overwhelmed the pot's rightful resident, a Spathoglottis plicata.

What makes G. marantina such a weedy plant? The answer lies in its propensity to produce bulbils along the basal, sterile bracts. These bulbils eventually fall off and develop into small plants that can smother neighboring vegetation if not weeded out in time. Every year, at the beginning of the rainy season, I have to look out for these plantlets and get rid of them or everything is going to be out of control. Once they reach sufficient sizes, the roots dig deeply and widely, and makes pulling out the colonizers practically impossible without also disturbing the root system of surrounding plants. And being a ginger, forget not that even if you throw it away, the rhizomes have enough stored food to actually survive the ordeal and start over again and eventually form stands. If you have this plant and would like to get rid of it and/or its bulbils and plantlets, please be responsible by not mindlessly throwing them away. Bury them in a compost bin or leave them under the sun for about a week or until the rhizomes have desiccated, and dispose off properly. 

Developing bulbils are clearly seen on the basal bracts of this inflorescence.

As pesky as it is, I have to be honest: G. marantina is a neat plant with interesting, eye-catching flowers. It is very easy to care for and blooms freely. But you need to be aware that its maintenance does not actually entail taking care of it, but getting rid of the bulbils and its plantlets!