Hi
I hope the experiment with the hedychium proceeds well.
Has anyone grown (or tried to grow), a plant from a dry rhizome?
I bought a very plump rhizome (so long ago I can't be sure, but probably h. gardeniarum), from a local garden centre at least three and a half years ago. It is around 6-8 inches long and 2+ inches in diameter, and when I bought it, it had no roots.
I potted it up with the two small buds covered with les than quarter inch of compost. Indoors, the rhizome did nothing for at all until I gave it some bottom heat (20C+) in the middle of last year. After several weeks, one bud broke and over winter it has made a cane of about 18 inches tall with 6 leaves. It has been stuck at that stage for several weeks and when I tipped it from the pot recently, as I had suspected, it has made no roots at all - the shoot has used the rhizome to make growth.

When I repotted it, I noticed a small pimple breaking through the dried sheaths at the base of the cane that I thought might be a root, so have replanted with an inch or so of the cane buried, including the pimple/assumed root.

Comments anyone?