Those ARE the flowers, you knucklehead.

The whitish "pods" are actually the flower buds.
Flowers that are bird pollinated do not open widely.

Its a "Shell Ginger", Alpinia zerumbet.
Its a very common plant in cultivation in the tropics and subtropics,
invasive and a potential weed.

http://www.plantoftheweek.org/week064.shtml

http://www.hear.org/starr/hiplants/i...nia_zerumbet_t
humbnails.htm

http://www.kobakoba.co.uk/alpinia%20zerumbet.htm

http://dynamics.org/~altenber/PROJECTS/ALPINIA/

Now you get back to all those "authorities" in your SoCal neighborhood that
didn't know what it was and straighten them out. Its should have been in one
of your garden books.


GregR wrote in message
...
animaux wrote:

It can be any number of things, including heliconia, bird of
paradise...others.
If it has flowers I'm positive people can identify it, but foliage only
is not
helpful.

No flowers as of right now, but it does have some white-ish "pods" that
look like
they're about to open. Looks like the flowers are going to be yellow, with
a
reddish tint to the lower interior:

http://tinyurl.com/x0jp
http://tinyurl.com/x0k0

--

GregR