While you eat ginger treats this month you probably won’t think of the plant that flavors them, but it has an interesting story.

Ginger root (Zingiber officinale) is used all over the world to flavor meat, seafood, vegetables and sweets.  The plant is extinct in the wild yet millions of tons are cultivated each year.

Ginger is a flowering perennial that grows new stems from its rhizomes each spring. According to Wikipedia it probably originated in the tropical rainforest of the Indian subcontinent.

The plant is two to three feet tall with a pretty orchid-like flower.  Though most of us have never seen the plant it can be grown in the garden.  It takes 8-10 months for the rhizomes to mature.

The spice trade introduced ginger to the western world where it’s been popular since Roman times.  Eventually cultivation put it out of business in the wild but made ginger more successful than its cohorts in the rainforest.

Today most ginger is grown in India, China and Nigeria, 2.1 million tons per year.

Wildly successful ginger is extinct in the wild.

(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)