Turmeric is a flowering plant, Curcuma longa of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, the roots of which are used in cooking. The plant is a perennial, rhizomatous, herbaceous plant native to the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, that requires temperatures between 20 and 30 °C and a considerable amount of annual rainfall to thrive. Plants are gathered each year for their rhizomes, some for propagation in the following season and some for consumption.
Zingiberaceae or the ginger family is a family of flowering plants made up of about 50 genera with a total of about 1600 known species of aromatic perennial herbs with creeping horizontal or tuberous rhizomes distributed throughout tropical Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Members of the family Zingiberaceae including turmeric, ginger, Javanese ginger, and galangal have been used for centuries in traditional medicine. Preclinical studies of Zingiberaceae extracts have shown analgesic properties.
Etlingera elatior is a species of herbaceous perennial plant. Botanical synonyms include Nicolaia elatior, Phaeomeria magnifica, Nicolaia speciosa, Phaeomeria speciosa, Alpinia elatior, and Alpinia magnifica.
Thunbergia laurifolia, the laurel clockvine or blue trumpet vine, is native to India and Thailand and the Indomalayan realm, the species occurs from Indochina to Malaysia.
Kaempferia galanga, commonly known as kencur, aromatic ginger, sand ginger, cutcherry, or resurrection lily, is a monocotyledonous plant in the ginger family, and one of four plants called galangal. It is found primarily in open areas in Indonesia, southern China, Taiwan, Cambodia, and India, but is also widely cultivated throughout Southeast Asia.
Cratoxylum maingayi is a plant in the family Hypericaceae. It is named for the botanist Alexander Carroll Maingay.
Macropanax maingayi is a tree in the family Araliaceae.
Vatica harmandiana, also known by the synonym Vatica cinerea, is a species of plant in the family Dipterocarpaceae. It is a smallish tree native to Southeast Asia. It is the most common plant species in certain types of mature woodland habitat within its range and is furthermore common in disturbed secondary forests covering much of its range, nonetheless it was considered, along with most Dipterocarpaceae, to be endangered by the IUCN between 1998 and 2017. It is usually not commercially harvested except for local use.
Etlingera is a genus of Indo-Pacific herbaceous perennial flowering plants in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, consisting of more than 100 species found in tropical regions of the Old World.
Cautleya is a small genus of perennial plants of the family Zingiberaceae, found in the eastern Himalayas through to China and Vietnam. It consists of two species of high-altitude tropical and temperate exotic jungle gingers, native to cool forest areas – an unusual habitat for members of the Zingiberaceae. They are grown as ornamental flowering plants.
Etlingera fulgens is a species of herbaceous perennial plant of the family Zingiberaceae. This species occurs in southern Thailand and peninsular Malaysia. E. fulgens is used as an ornamental plant in landscape gardens for its bright red flowers and young leaves.
Gonystylus maingayi is a tree in the family Thymelaeaceae.
Helicia petiolaris is a plant in the family Proteaceae. The specific epithet petiolaris means "stalked", referring to the leaves.
Costus curvibracteatus is a tropical rhizomatous perennial native to Costa Rica and Panama. A member of the spiral ginger family of plants, its common name is orange tulip ginger. It is also sometimes referred to as spiral ginger; however, this common name is better associated with Costus barbatus, a more widely cultivated and very similar species. Despite the name and its relation to the ginger family (Zingiberaceae), the rhizomes of the orange tulip ginger are not edible.
Goniothalamus tenuifolius is a species of plant in the family Annonaceae. It is native to Peninsular Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. George King, the British botanist who first formally described the species, named it after its slender leaved foliage.
Mitrephora maingayi is a species of plant in the family Annonaceae. It is native to Bangladesh, Borneo, Cambodia, Laos, Peninsular Malaysia, Myanmar, Sumatra, and Vietnam. Joseph Hooker and Thomas Thomson, the British botanists who first formally described the species, named it in honor of Alexander Carroll Maingay, the British botanist who collected the specimen they examined.
Mamiyil Sabu formerly Head of the Department of Botany, University of Calicut and currently working as CSIR-Emeritus Scientist at Malabar Botanical Garden and Institute for Plant Sciences, Kozhikode district, Kerala, India. He worked for over 37 years on the research of gingers, which include families such as Cannaceae, Marantaceae, Zingiberaceae, Heliconiaceae, Costaceae, Musaceae etc. A comprehensive work on these groups have been taken after a gap of 125 years, which resulted in the discovery of several new species and rediscovery of many species after 155 years.
Halijah Ibrahim is a Malaysian botanist.
Rosemary Margaret Smith (1933–2004) was a Scottish botanist and illustrator who specialized in the taxonomy of the Zingiberaceae, or ginger family. Many of the species she classified and identified as being placed into improper genera were found in Asian countries, especially in the isolated island of Borneo.
Mallotus floribundus is a tree in the family Euphorbiaceae, in the Stylanthus section, native to Southeast Asia, Wallaceae, New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
