ginger lily
noun1
Any of several plants of the genera Alpinia and Hedychium belonging to the ginger family (Zingiberaceae).
- 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:
2 more examples
- […] the beaks / of fledgling ginger lilies gasped for rain.1973, Derek Walcott, chapter 8, in Another Life, page 52:
- 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: