GINGER

Characteristics

Ginger is a slender herbaceous perennial herb belonging to Zingiberaceae family. It forms a spreading, tuberous, underground stem or rhizome. The plant produces erect, tall and dark green leafy shoots (pseudostems) 30-100 cm high. The aerial pseudostems ususally bear 8-12 distichous leaves. Flowers are small, fragile; short lived, very a few, and usually arising one or two at a time

Plant with rhizomes

The evanescent flowers are yellowish and speckled with a purplish lip. Calyx is thin, tubular, spathaceous, 1-1.2 cm long and is three-toothed. Corolla tube is 2-2.5 cm long with three lobes. The dorsal lobe is 1.5-2.5 cm long, 8 mm wide and is curved over the anther and narrowed to the tip. The labellum or lip corresponds to three stamens, is nearly circular, dull purple with cream blotches at base. The perfect stamen has a short filament; the anther is cream coloured and is prolonged into a beak-like appendage. The rhizome, protruding just below the apex of the appendage, has a circular apical aperture surrounded by stiff hairs. There are two slender free styloids. The inferior ovary is trilocular with several ovules per locule on axile placentation. Fruit is an oblong, thin walled, three - valved capsule but is rarely produced. The seeds are small, black and arillate. Rhizomes are fleshy sympodial, hard and thick, laterally compressed, often palmately branched with about 1.5-2.5 cm in diameter. The inner core is usually pale yellow while the outer is light yellow. They are covered with small distichous scales with an encircling insertion and fine fibrous roots in the top layer.