The common cooking ginger is an herbaceous perennial with upright stems and narrow medium green leaves arranged in two ranks on each stem. The plant gets about 4 ft (1.2 m) tall with leaves about 3/4 in (1.9 cm) wide and 7 (17.8 cm) long. Ginger grows from an aromatic tuberlike rhizome (underground stem) which is warty and branched. The flower grows on a separate stem from the foliage stem, and forms a dense spike, to 3 in (7.6 cm) tall. Flowers are yellow green with purple lips and cream colored blotches. Most gingers in cultivation are sterile cultivars grown for the edible rhizome, and the flower is rarely seen. The common cooking ginger originated in tropical Asia, but is now grown as a commercial crop for the ginger root in Latin America and Africa as well as South East Asia. Fifty percent of worldwide ginger production is in India. The best quality ginger comes from Jamaica. Ginger is often grown in a container and brought indoors in winter when water and light are reduced and the plant is allowed to "rest." Common ginger grows from thick fleshy underground stems called "rhizomes." This is ginger root (actually a rhizome), the part of the plant that is eaten and from which the spice is obtained. Ginger root is widely used around the world as a spice or food additive. Ginger is fried and eaten plain, and used in curry pastes and other sauces in India; it is grilled and used to flavor fish and meats or for making ginger tea in Indonesia; it is boiled or fried in Chinese cookery; used to baste chicken or eaten as pickled ginger (beni shoga) and served with sushi in Japan; and used in Jamaica to make Jamaican jerk paste. A ginger extract with carbonated water makes the popular drink we call ginger ale. Ginger was used in the Middle Ages in Europe to flavor beer.
