ginger lily

plural ginger lilies

1. Any of several plants of the genera Alpinia and Hedychium belonging to the ginger family (Zingiberaceae).

   […] the beaks / of fledgling ginger lilies gasped for rain.

   1973, Derek Walcott, chapter 8, in Another Life, page 52

   3 more examples

   I hardly know why I always thought of her as the ginger-lily girl, except that it might have been because the flowers and flower-buds of the ginger-lily make big strenuous plaits in their thick stems exactly like the long coarse plaits of her hair.

   1964, H. E. Bates, “The Ginger-Lily Girl”, in The Fabulous Mrs V., Penguin, published 1970, page 57

   The house was burning […] and I knew that I would never see Coulibri again. Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses, the rocking-chairs and the blue sofa, the jasmine and the honeysuckle, and the picture of the Miller’s Daughter.

   1966, Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea, page 45

   Sliding glass windows opened so the hummingbirds could flit through, siphoning nectar from the cut ginger lilies.

   2009, Monique Roffey, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, page 21