Renealmia alpinia (Rottb.) Maas

A robust ginger family plant. It keeps growing from year to year. It has a creeping rhizome. The leaves are 90 cm long. The flowers have white, pink or red bracts around them. The fruit are red capsules which mature to black. The seeds are brownish. There are orange yellow fibres and a fatty substance around the seeds. This is used to colour food and flavour rice.

Wet thickets or dense mixed forest, often forming large colonies, at elevations up to 1,200 metres in Guatemala. Secondary forest, inundated forest, swamps and stream banks; usually below 500 metres, occasionally ascending to 1,500 metres.

The fatty substance around the seeds is used to colour food and flavour rice. They are also eaten fresh or mixed with beans. The leaves are used to wrap food.

Plants can be grown from seed or by division.