xavierraynaudphoto@Flickr is the photographer behind today's image (original image via BPotD Flickr Group Pool). Thank you!

I've titled this plant with a tentative name, as it is my own identification; with 80 species in the genus, some cultivars and a number of unnamed hybrids, I can't say for certain whether this is indeed what it is. It does seem to have the qualities of Curcuma alismatifolia, including (I'm guessing) its use as a cut flower.

If my identification is correct, then the common name for this plant is Siam tulip or summer tulip (though, as is often the case with common names, it is not a tulip, but rather a ginger relative). In the wild, some of the densest populations of this species can be found in Pa Hin Ngam National Park of north-central Thailand. The range of the species extends southward from Thailand into Cambodia and northward to Burma and Laos.

The first collection of this species by Western explorers occurred in 1859, when the British explorer Robert Hermann Schomburgk collected it in Thailand (while he was serving as the British Consul-General). It was next collected in 1875 by Parisian botanist Godefroy–Lebeuf (at the age of 23) from Cambodia. The species was finally scientifically named forty-four years after Schomburgk first collected it by the French botanist, Gagnepain.