Zingiber officinale

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   Zingiber officinale

Zingiber officinale Roscoe, ginger, Zingiberaceae, is a popular spice and condiment cultivated throughout the tropical world.

The fleshy rhizomes (underground stems, Zingiber officinale2)  are the commercial product, consumed in the fresh condition, or dried and powdered, or candied in sugar or pickled in salt or as imagination demands.   Ginger has a characteristic odour and warm pungent taste, emanating from a combination of essential oils, collectively called ginger oil.   Ginger is a common additive to a considerable lot of tropical cooking.

Ginger is used as medicine in asthma, as carminative, stimulant, in constipation, diarrhoea, indigestion, scabies, etc., and is attributed with anti-oxidant properties.   Along with pepper it is an abortifacient.

Ginger is one of the most important and extremely useful medicinal plants of India.   There is extensive literature on the chemistry and uses of ginger, needing a urgently compilation.

Ginger is propagated vegetatively from the rhizomes and hence the rarity of flowering (Zingiber officinale1) under cultivation does not affect the cultivator, but frustrates the plant breeder.   Sometimes, ginger plants occur outside cultivation, but qualifying them as wild is uncertain.