Wild ginger is a low-growing, hairy plant that spreads from creeping underground stems. The underground rhizomes are fleshy, intertwined and branching; with stems not rising into the air.
The flowers are usually hidden by the leaves, arising from the leaf axils. The flowers are 3-parted, red-brown or purplish brown, with stiff, white hairs. The flowers emit a scent of decaying fruit. Blooms April–May.
The leaves are large, rounded or heart- or kidney-shaped, strongly veined, leathery with a shiny surface, and hairy.
Height: to about 6 inches.
Statewide, but absent from the southeast lowlands and a few western counties.
Habitat and Conservation
Occurs on rich, wooded bottomland and upland slopes, banks and terraces of streams and rivers, in moist valleys and ravines, and at the bases of bluffs.
Status
Native Missouri spring wildflower.
Human Connections
The roots have been used as a ginger substitute, and this plant was once used medicinally by Native Americans to treat several maladies. Carcinogenic chemicals are present in the plant, however, and ingesting it is not recommended.
This interesting wildflower can be used as a shade-tolerant ground cover. Never dig plants from the wild. Always get plants from reputable native wildflower nurseries.
Handling the plants may cause dermatitis in some people.
Ecosystem Connections
The odor and color of the flowers are thought to attract pollinating insects such as flies and beetles. Several types of plants have flowers that look like raw flesh and smell like rotting meat:
- One example is the tropical corpse flower (titan arum) whose gigantic blossoms intrigue visitors at botanical gardens.
- Other examples are the carrion flowers in genus Stapelia; these desert species have flowers that look like open wounds and stink like a dead animal; they fool blow flies into being their pollinators.
Fungi are not plants, but some of them, such as the stinkhorns, also attract flies, which visit the mushroom's stinky spore-bearing tissues, then carry the spores to new places.
Our wild ginger is completely unrelated to true ginger, which is in the ginger family. True ginger is more closely related to cannas, bananas, bird-of-paradise, and prayer-plants. Our plant is called ginger because it the plant smells similar to ginger and used to be used as a ginger substitute.
Wild ginger is in the birthwort family (Aristolochiaceae). Missouri has only a few species in this family. You might be familiar with woolly pipe-vine, or Dutchman's pipe (Aristolochia tomentosa), a woody vine with unusual pipe-shaped flowers that grows wild in Missouri. It, too, is becoming popular as a landscaping plant. Virginia snakeroot (Aristolochia serpentaria) is another member of the family that lives in Missouri. It is a nonwoody perennial plant, not a vine, with alternate, entire leaves, and a rather zigzag stem that is 6–24 inches long.
