The Ginger Plant Life Cycle
Ginger has been cultivated as a herb in India and Asia for thousands of years for use in cooking as well as medicine. In ancient India ginger was known by its sanskrit name "srngaveram." In the 18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, while visiting India, discovered ginger for the west and named it "zingiber," a word derived from Greek and Arabic meaning "antler shaped." Contrary to popular belief the edible part of the ginger plant is not the root, but the swollen underground stem known as the rhizome. Does this Spark an idea?
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Location
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Ginger plants thrive in rich, warm soil with access to filtered sunlight but not shade. The plant requires warm weather and high humidity because of its tropical origins. Ginger will not grow well in areas that experience frost, strong winds or waterlogged soil. For this reason China, India, Jamaica and Hawaii all grow ginger well.
Rhizomes
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Ginger is a perennial plant which repeatedly grows from the underground rhizomes. Usually 5 to 10 centimeters deep underground, the rhizomes grow small roots similar to the way in which roots grow from potatoes.
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Plant
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The ginger plant usually grows to about 3 feet in height. As it sprouts from the rhizome it progressively becomes thicker and clumpier as it grows. The leaves are long, flat and green and originate from the stem. Toward the end of summer the plant begins to die back; this is the time when ginger is harvested.
Harvest
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People harvest ginger grown for food by removing the rhizome from the ground once the leaves have died back. They scrub the rhizome of its roots and wash off the dirt before chopping and shipping it. Wild ginger will die back in winter but keep its roots and rhizome underground. The plant reappears as a fresh shoot the next spring.
Flower
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Wild ginger usually begins to flower after several years of growth. The flower of the "zingiber officinale" or standard ginger plant are green and quite small, but there are over 1,300 species of ginger plant, some with large pink or red flowers. Some ginger plants are cultivated purely as an ornamental plant.
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References
- Photo Credit fresh ginger image by Brett Mulcahy from Fotolia.com
