Garden Ginger

Zingiber officinale, the root ginger of commerce, is cultivated in the Hazara region m Haripur and Tret. Also cultivated in the Sind and Punjab Plains. It is always propagated by rhizomes. The rhizomes are dug up while the plant is in the vegetative state and thus it rarely flowers.

Widely cultivated for medicine and spice.

Up to 1.3 m. Leaves sessile, up to c. 15 x 2(3) cm, linear-lanceolate, glabrous. Inflorescence on an up to 25 cm erect peduncle. Bracts green with a paler margin. Flowers yellow with a purple, yellow-spotted labellum; anther dark purple.

Rhizomes branched, yellowish inside, thickened, fleshy, strongly aromatic. Pseudostems 50--100 cm. Leaves sessile; ligule slightly 2-lobed, 2--4 mm, membranous; leaf blade lanceolate or linear-lanceolate, 15--30 × 2--2.5 cm, glabrescent. Inflorescences arising from rhizomes, ovoid, 4--5 × ca. 1.5 cm; peduncle to 25 cm; bracts pale green, sometimes yellowish at margin, ovate, ca. 2.5 cm, apex mucronate; bracteoles equaling bracts. Calyx ca. 1 cm. Corolla yellowish green; tube 2--2.5 cm; lobes lanceolate, ca. 1.8 cm. Central lobe of labellum with purple stripe and cream blotches, oblong-obovate, shorter than corolla lobes; lateral lobes ovate, ca. 6 mm, free nearly to base. Stamen dark purple; anther ca. 9 mm; connective appendage curved, ca. 7 mm. Fl. Oct. 2 n = 22*.

Cultivated. Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Shandong, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan, Zhejiang [native origin unknown; widely cultivated in the tropics and subtropics].

Amomum zingiber Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 1: 1. 1753; Zingiber sichuanense Z. Y. Zhu et al.