Photo: J. Mood, AAU herbarium, CC BY (via GBIF)
Snow Ginger
Zingiber niveum
Also known as White Ginger, Thai Snow Ginger
Key benefits
✦Traditional uses
✦Zingiber niveum is one of the quieter members of a very famous family, a cousin of the culinary ginger found in nearly every kitchen, but this particular species has made its name in the garden rather than the medicine chest. Thai growers and tropical plant collectors prize it for its unusual habit of sending up a separate, snow-white flower spike directly from the rhizome at soil level, apart from its leafy stems, a trait shared by many gingers but rendered especially striking here by the flower's pale, almost porcelain color. Unlike Zingiber officinale, whose warming rhizome has centuries of documented traditional use behind it, Zingiber niveum does not carry a well established record of folk medicine, so it is best appreciated today as a botanical curiosity and a beautiful addition to a shaded tropical bed rather than as a home remedy.
How to grow & use it
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- ✦Shell ginger (Alpinia zerumbet)
- ✦Butterfly ginger (Hedychium coronarium)
- ✦Calathea
- ✦Alpinia zerumbet
- ✦Hedychium coronarium
“For the gardener who wants a hidden, snow pale jewel blooming quietly at the soil line beneath the tropical canopy.”
The species name niveum is Latin for snow white, describing the pale, waxy flower spike that pushes up from the ground on its own short stem, entirely separate from the plant's leafy shoots, a curious habit found across many members of the ginger genus.
Unlike common ginger, snow ginger has no established history of culinary or medicinal use, and its sap can occasionally irritate sensitive skin.