Costaceae, known as the Costus family or spiral gingers, is a family of pantropical monocots. It belongs to the order Zingiberales, which contains horticulturally and economically important plants such as the banana (Musaceae), bird-of-paradise (Strelitziaceae), and edible ginger (Zingiberaceae). The seven genera in Costaceae together contain about 143 known species (1 in Monocostus, 2 in Dimerocostus, 16 in Tapeinochilos, 2 in Paracostus, 8 in Chamaecostus, c. 5 in Hellenia, and c. 80 in Costus). They are native to tropical climates of Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America. Several
FAMILY
via GBIF
Costaceae, known as the Costus family or spiral gingers, is a family of pantropical monocots. It belongs to the order Zingiberales, which contains horticulturally and economically important plants such as the banana (Musaceae), bird-of-paradise (Strelitziaceae), and edible ginger (Zingiberaceae). The seven genera in Costaceae together contain about 143 known species (1 in Monocostus, 2 in Dimerocostus, 16 in Tapeinochilos, 2 in Paracostus, 8 in Chamaecostus, c. 5 in Hellenia, and c. 80 in Costus). They are native to tropical climates of Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America. Several species are frequently found in cultivation.
== Description == The simple leaves are entire and spirally arranged, with those toward the base of the stem usually bladeless. Leaf bases have a closed sheath with a ligule, or projection at the top of the sheath.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).