Ginger The Worthy Gift From Mother Nature

ginger valuable for curative and culinary 

Ginger is the one worthy gift from our mother nature; it’s valuable as a culinary herb, condiment, spice, home remedy, and medicinal agent. In that few foods or spices, of which ginger is best known, are as well documented as medicinal plants as they are as food. The curative or placebo purpose, ginger covered both.

Ginger plant is an erect perennial growing from one to three feet in height. The stem is surrounded by the sheathing bases of the two-ranked leaves. A club-like spike of yellowish, purple-lipped flowers have showy greenish yellow bracts beneath. Unfortunately, ginger rarely flowers in cultivation.


Ginger consists of the fresh or dried roots of Zingiber officinale. In 1807, the English botanist William Roscoe (1753-1831) gave the plant names Zingiber officinale. The ginger family is a tropical group especially abundant in Indonesia and Malaysia, consisting of more 1275 plant species in 48 genera. The genus Zingiber includes about 100 species of aromatic herbs from East Asia and tropical Australia. The name of the genus, Zingiber, derives from a Sanskrit word denoting "horn-shaped," in reference to the protrusions on the rhizome.

The ginger of commerce consists of the thick scaly rhizomes (underground stems) of the plant. They branch with thick thumb-like protrusions, thus individual divisions of the rhizome are known as "hands." Ginger, both fresh and dried, has become increasingly popular in the United States in recent years.

In China, ginger is mentioned in the earliest of herbals. Dried ginger is first mentioned in Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing, attributed to the Divine Plowman Emperor, Shen Nong, thought to have lived some 5,000 years ago. Fresh ginger was first listed in Ming Yi Bie Lu (Miscellaneous Records of Famous Physicians) and Ben Cao Jing Ji Zhu (Collection of Commentaries on the Classics of Materia Medica) both attributed to Tao Hong-Jing written during the dynasties of the North and South Kingdoms around the year 500 AD.

Even in modern China, while an essential ingredient in almost any meal, it is also one of the most widely consumed drugs. Both fresh and dried roots are official drugs of the modern Chinese pharmacopoeia, as is a liquid extract and tincture of ginger. Ginger is used in dozens of traditional Chinese prescriptions as a guide drug to mediate the effects of potentially toxic ingredients. In fact, in modern China, Ginger is believed to be used in half of all herbal prescriptions.

Like the ancient Chinese, in India the fresh and dried roots were considered distinct medicinal products. Fresh ginger has been used for cold-induced disease, nausea, asthma, cough, colic, heart palpitation, swellings, dyspepsia, loss of appetite, and rheumatism; in short, for the same purposes as in ancient China.

In 90th century India, one English writer observed that a popular remedy for cough and asthma consisted of the juice of fresh ginger with a little juice of fresh garlic, mixed with honey. A paste of powdered dried ginger was applied to the temples to relieve headache. To allay nausea, fresh ginger was mixed with a little honey, topped off with a pinch of burnt peacock feathers. One modern government health guide in India suggests 1-2 teaspoons of ginger juice with honey as a cough suppressant. Ginger is as popular a home remedy in India today, as it was 2,000 years ago.


As ginger is really valuable for natural healing solution, culinary herb, home remedy, and medicinal agent its likely that ginger will be enjoyed and valued for the next millennium, and new research will undoubtedly reveal new value for this ancient herb.