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| Home > Types of Spices > Roots > Wild Ginger
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| | Wild Ginger root
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 Botanical name:Curcuma amada Roxb.
Family name:Zingiberaceae.
Indian names are follows:
Hindi:Am Haldi
Bengali:Amada
Marathi:Ambi Haladi
Meitei:Yai Hanuman
Sanskrit:Amragandhi Haridra.
The herb is a wild grown plant being used in India traditionally for medicinal purposes and as spice besides for flavoring foods. It is another variety of turmeric with a difference that its rhizome gives the flavor of mango.
The herb is perennial with its short and thin rhizomes. The petioles are very long with simple leaves. The big flower heads are red in color and are borne in spiked inflorescence during July/August. The color of the rhizomes is light creamy yellow. It is sour with aromatic taste like green mango.
The rhizomes yield 1.1% essential oil containing d-alphapinene, 18%; ocimene, 47.2%; linalool 11.2%; linalyl acetate 9.1%; safrole 9.3%; and unidentified substances 3.5%. Rhizomes on acetone extraction yield a colorless oil, curcumin and a phytotesterol and an azulenogenic oil having pinene, camphor, l-alpha and l-beta curcumene and termerone.
 The plant has its origin in India. Traditionally the herb is being used as a condiment and in pickles. The infusion is used to produce the flavor of the mango artificially in confectionery.
Method of processing the raw rhizome is identical to those of turmeric. Like turmeric it is also marketed as dry rhizome, powdered form and other form. Same technology can be adopted as in case of turmeric. It is popularly used for treatment of diseases and disorders and as cosmetics.
In Manipur, it is utilized for manufacture of tablets for cure of piles. It has capacity to cure diabetes. It is utilized as carminative, stomachic and considered digestive. It is good for fever, body ache and problems of nerve.
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