officinale is found in the humid partly-shaded tropical to subtropical lowland forests. Other spices in the ginger family include the turmeric ( Curcuma longa) and cardamom ( Elettaria cardamomum). Of oriental origin, it was one of the first oriental spices to arrive in Europe, obtained by the Greeks and Romans from Arab traders. This is the only species in the Zingiber genus that produces the culinary root and stem ginger. Seeds are black and small, each with an aril (= an appendage growing at or near the scar of the seed or fleshy thickening of the seed coat). The fruit is a red capsule with a thin wall and 3-valved. In cultivated plants, these flowering stems are rarely, if ever, produced. These are borne on cone-shaped spiked inflorescences that are found on shorter pseudostems that are separate from those that bear the leaves. White to pale yellow in colour with purplish lips that have yellow dots and striations, they protrude just beyond the greenish to yellowish leaf-like bracts. Covered with deciduous thin scales which leave ring-like scars, the epidermal layer is brown and corky, which is usually removed before use, while the flesh is pale yellow with a spicy scent.įlowers are fragile and short-lived. The rhizome, which is the source of ginger, is in fact the stem of the plant although often erroneously called a root, growing horizontally underground at a shallow depth. Formed from a series of leaf sheaths wrapped tightly around one another, long narrow mid-green leaf blades are arranged alternately along this pseudostem. The erect part of the plant growing above ground is known as a pseudostem, which is a shoot and not a true stem. Shoots (pseudostems) extend above ground, arising from buds on the underground rhizomes, which are thickened, branched, somewhat resembling a swollen hand. An erect, slender and herbaceous plant, Z.
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