This is the life cycle of the Zingiber genus, the Pinecone and Beehive gingers.
This is ZIngiber zerumbet, the common pinecone ginger that many many people here in Florida have in their yards. Also called Awapuhi or Shampoo Ginger. This ginger is not edible. Its smaller cousin, the Kitchen or Cooking Ginger, Z. official, has the same life cycle but its blooms are much much smaller, never turn red but stay green, and overall the foliage part is just much much smaller in stature.
It starts off as a nice tall green ginger and when it starts to bloom in the late summer/early fall the blooms are basilar and go from green to red. Then they start to decay, and the foliage starts to brown, and finally the whole plant dies back and disappears until the next spring.
I have probably 100 of these in my yard, they multiply like flies, and all this is going on simultaneously now on the plants here.
The only other gingers that are used as food to my knowledge are the Cardamom ginger, an Elletaria species, and the pods of that are used. The Turmeric ginger is a Curcuma, C. longa. And the Galangal ginger used extensively in Thai cooking is a very very large growing Alpinia species
