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.
Galangal is a common name for several tropical rhizomatous spices.
Elettaria is a genus of flowering plants in the family Zingiberaceae. They are native to India and Sri Lanka, but cultivated and naturalized elsewhere. One member of the genus, E. cardamomum, is a commercially important spice used as a flavouring agent in many countries.
The genus Zingiber is native to Southeast Asia especially in Thailand, China, the Indian Subcontinent, and New Guinea. It contains the true gingers, plants grown the world over for their medicinal and culinary value. The most well known are Z. officinale and Z. mioga, two garden gingers.
Curcuma is a genus of about 100 accepted species in the family Zingiberaceae that contains such species as turmeric and Siam tulip. They are native to Southeast Asia, southern China, the Indian Subcontinent, New Guinea and northern Australia. Some species are reportedly naturalized in other warm parts of the world such as tropical Africa, Central America, Florida, and various islands of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Generally, most curcuma grows well in loose and sandy soil in shaded areas.
François Gagnepain was a French botanist. The standard botanical author abbreviation Gagnep. is applied to plants described by Gagnepain.
Ludwig Riedel was a German botanist. Riedel described relatively few species himself, but collected hundreds of new species, many named after him. The genus Riedelia (Ericaceae) was named for him by Meisner.
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.
Kai Larsen was a Danish botanist.
Hura is a genus of trees in the family Euphorbiaceae described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. It is native to South America, Mesoamerica, and the West Indies.
Roscoea is a genus of perennial plants of the family Zingiberaceae. Most members of the family are tropical, whereas Roscoea species are native to mountainous regions of the Himalayas, China and its southern neighbours. Roscoea flowers superficially resemble orchids, although they are not related. The flowers of Roscoea have a complicated structure, in which some of the showy coloured parts are not formed by petals, but by staminodes, sterile stamens which have evolved to become like petals. Some species are grown as ornamental plants in gardens.
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.
Kaempferia is a genus of plants in the ginger family. It is native to China, India, and Southeast Asia.
Siamanthus is a genus of plants in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. It contains only one known species, Siamanthus siliquosus, endemic to Thailand and first described in 1998.
Gagnepainia is a genus of plants in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. It has three known species, all native to Indochina. All three were initially described in 1895 as members of Hemiorchis, then transferred to the newly created Gagnepainia in 1904.
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.
Larsenianthus is a genus of monocotyledonous plants in the ginger family (Zingiberaceae). The genus was established in 2010. The four or so species are native to the area of the eastern Himalayas.
Rosemary Margaret Smith 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.
Smithatris supraneanae is a monocotyledonous plant species described by Walter John Emil Kress and Kai Larsen. Smithatris supraneanae is part of the genus Smithatris and the family Zingiberaceae. The IUCN categorizes the species globally as critically endangered. The species' range is in Thailand. No subspecies are listed in the Catalog of Life.
