Woodson, Jr., Missouri Botanical Garden curator and botanist.

Costus are ginger like plants with spiraling stems. I’ve been referring to it as lipstick ginger, but a search for that got me to the more common name, red button ginger. Many times the label on the plants at the nursery might read something like tropical or ginger variant. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Fred Taylor, a Costus Woodsonii. Turns out that was a good idea so we headed out. I suggested that we go to the nursery and buy a plant that we could name it for him. Lucia was pretty sad when I got home from work. The best that she could do was to find her way back to an area that she knew and then go home. The funeral was to be in an area of town that Lucia did not know very well and when she called me and told me where she was I knew that she had missed a turn and was in an area where there are so many interstate exits that I would not be able to get her to where she needed to go with phone directions. Although they picked with each other about eating habits and the too many electrical things Lucia had working in her classroom, they had a good working relationship.

A few months ago the custodian at Lucia’s school passed away unexpectedly.

Red button ginger plant for sale