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.
Ginger is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. It is a herbaceous perennial which grows annual pseudostems about one meter tall bearing narrow leaf blades. The inflorescences bear flowers having pale yellow petals with purple edges, and arise directly from the rhizome on separate shoots.
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow horizontally. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards.
Hedychium is a genus of flowering plants in the ginger family Zingiberaceae, native to lightly wooded habitats in Asia. There are approximately 70-80 known species, native to India, Southeast Asia, and Madagascar. Some species have become widely naturalized in other lands, and considered invasive in some places.
Hedychium coronarium is a perennial flowering plant in the Zingiberaceae (ginger) family, native to the Eastern Himalayas region of India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, through northernmost Myanmar and Thailand, southern China to Taiwan in the East. It is typically found growing in the forest understory, where the pseudostems arising from rhizomes below ground may reach 1-3m in height. In its native environment flowering occurs between August and December.
Hedychium coccineum is a species of flowering plant in the ginger family Zingiberaceae. It is native to southern China, the Himalayas, India and Indochina. Common names include orange gingerlily, scarlet gingerlily and orange bottlebrush ginger.
Hedychium gardnerianum, the Kahili ginger, Kahila garland-lily or ginger lily, is a species of flowering plant in the ginger family Zingiberaceae, native to the Himalayas in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. It is an erect herbaceous perennial growing to 8 ft (2.4 m) tall with long, bright green leaves clasping the tall stems. The very fragrant pale yellow and red flowers are held in dense spikes above the foliage. They appear towards the end of summer.
The plains pocket mouse is a heteromyid rodent of North America. It ranges from southwestern Minnesota and southeastern North Dakota to northern Texas east of the Rockies, and from northern Utah and Colorado to northern Chihuahua west of the Rockies.
Hedychium spicatum is a plant species native to China, the Himalayas, Myanmar, Thailand and Ethiopia.
Ralstonia solanacearum is an aerobic non-spore-forming, Gram-negative, plant pathogenic bacterium. R. solanacearum is soil-borne and motile with a polar flagellar tuft. It colonises the xylem, causing bacterial wilt in a very wide range of potential host plants. It is known as Granville wilt when it occurs in tobacco. Bacterial wilts of tomato, pepper, eggplant, and Irish potato caused by R. solanacearum were among the first diseases that Erwin Frink Smith proved to be caused by a bacterial pathogen. Because of its devastating lethality, R. solanacearum is now one of the more intensively studied phytopathogenic bacteria, and bacterial wilt of tomato is a model system for investigating mechanisms of pathogenesis. Ralstonia was until recently classified as Pseudomonas, with similarity in most aspects, except that it does not produce fluorescent pigment like Pseudomonas. The genomes from different strains vary from 5.5 Mb up to 6 Mb, roughly being 3.5 Mb of a chromosome and 2 Mb of a megaplasmid. While the strain GMI1000 was one of the first phytopathogenic bacterias to have its genome completed, the strain UY031 was the first R. solanacearum to have its methylome reported. Within the R. solanacearum species complex, the four major monophyletic clusters of strains are termed phylotypes, that are geographically distinct: phylotypes I-IV are found in Asia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, respectively.
Melicope haupuensis is a species of tree in the family Rutaceae known by the common names Haupa Mountain melicope and Pacific pelea. It is endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, where it is known only from the island of Kauai. It is threatened by habitat loss. It is a federally listed endangered species of the United States. Like other Hawaiian Melicope, this species is known as alani.
Sophora flavescens, the shrubby sophora, is a species of plant in the genus Sophora of the family Fabaceae. This genus contains about 52 species, nineteen varieties, and seven forms that are widely distributed in Asia, Oceania, and the Pacific islands. About fifteen of these species have a long history of use in traditional Chinese medicines.
Cyanea hamatiflora is a rare species of flowering plant in the bellflower family known by the common name wetforest cyanea. It is endemic to Hawaii, where it is known from the islands of Maui and Hawaii, and there are probably fewer than 250 plants remaining in total. It is a federally listed endangered species. Like other Cyanea it is known as haha in Hawaiian.
Cyrtandra cyaneoides is a rare species of flowering plant in the African violet family known by the common name māpele. It is endemic to Kauaʻi in Hawaiʻi, where it is known from eleven populations containing a total of under 800 individual plants. Several of these were discovered between 2003 and 2008. It is a shrub growing 1 to 1.3 meters tall and bearing white flowers. It was federally listed as an endangered species in 1996.
Dubautia latifolia is a rare species of flowering plant in the aster family known by the common name koholapehu. It is endemic to Hawaii where it is known only from the west side of the island of Kauai. Like other Dubautia this plant is called na`ena`e.
H. flavescens may refer to:
Haniffia is a genus of plants in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. It has 3 known species, native to Thailand and to Peninsular Malaysia.
Scolopterus penicillatus, also known as the black spined weevil, is an endemic beetle of New Zealand. The beetle is present throughout New Zealand and can be discovered by beating native flowering plants in the summer months. In appearance it is a shining black colour with a purplish tinge and looks very similar to its close relative Scolopterus tetracanthus. S. penicillatus can be distinguished from S. tetracanthus as the spines on the shoulders of the former are much less pointed. Adult black spined weevils have been collected from Hedychium gardnerianum and caught in the flowers of Helichrysum lanceolatum. The larvae of S. penicillatus are known to develop in the recently dead bark of the various species of Pseudopanax.
Zingiberoideae is a subfamily of plants in the family Zingiberaceae.
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.
