African Ginger

Siphonochilus aethiopicus, African ginger, is a flowering plant of the ginger family, native to west and south Africa, where it grows in woodland, wooded grassland and bushland. It is a deciduous plant about 60 centimetres tall, with large, light green, lance-shaped leaves and funnel-shaped flowers that grow from ground level and last usually just one day; it regrows each year from underground stems called rhizomes. The South African form has white or pink flowers and the Nigerian form purple. The plant is used in traditional medicine across sub-Saharan Africa, and the African Herbal Pharmacopoeia lists it among the 51 most important medicinal plants of the region. The rhizomes are used for coughs, influenza, pain, inflammation and malaria and sometimes as a contraceptive tea; the rhizomes and leaves are used to ease menstrual pain. Over-harvesting has reduced it to about a tenth of its historic range, and some traditional healers hold that only wild-harvested plants have the right medical properties, though it can be grown.