Books and Other Publications about Gingers
The only book I know of that is written exclusively about gingers for home garden cultivation is Ornamental Gingers: A Guide to Selection and Cultivation, by Tim Chapman. This includes descriptions of over 100 species, and has 53 full color photos.
For a good book with gingers and many hundreds of other tropical-looking plants, I highly recommend Bob Riffle's book, The Tropical Look. He includes good descriptions of Alpinias, Costus, Globbas, and Hedychiums (but not Curcumas or Kaempferias). One of four books published in 1998 selected to receive the 1999 American Horticultural Society Annual Book Award, it has received rave reviews, and well deserved.
SMITHSONIAN PROJECT Genera Zingiberarum: A Classification and Treatise of the Genera of the Superorder Zingiberanae, including Bananas, Heliconias, Gingers and Relatives. W. John Kress and Collaborators
PHYLOGENETIC KEY TO THE ORDER ZINGIBERALES is available on line at the Smithsonian website.
Monocots of Mount Kinabalu Book review from the Kew Scientist, October 1998: Issue 14, the third part of John and Reed Beaman's work on The Plants of Mount Kinabalu, in Malasia. Includes many unusual species of Zingiberaceae.
FINE GARDENING, July-August 1998 issue #62, article on gingers by Derek Burch. The article includes some beautiful color photographs of several ginger species. The BACK ISSUE is still available.
Derek Burch and Betrock Information Systems publish a web magazine for the horticultural trade, titled The Hort Digest. The first issue of Hort Digest has two articles by Dr. Burch on small gingers and their potential appeal as pot plants. In this article he describes several small Curcuma, Kaempferia and Globbas suitable as potted plants.
Derek has another article on gingers in the January 2000 issue of Greenhouse Grower.
Jaramillo, M.A. and W.J. Kress. 1997. Phylogenetic relationships of the genera of the family Costaceae. Bulletin of the Heliconia Society 9(1/2): 5-8.
ABSTRACT: Costacea is a pantropical family with four genera: Costus, Dimerocostus, Monocostus and Tapeinochilos. No previous attempts have been made to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationship of the genera in the family. A cladistic analysis of the genera using morphological data and DNA sequences from rbcL cpDNA and 18S rDNA genes were performed. Different analyses were executed with morphological data only as well as combining morphological and molecular data. A combined phylogeny is proposed that places Tapeinochilos as the basal genus with a terminal clade formed by Dimerocostus and Monocostus.
There is an interesting article by Professor P. Sirirugsa on the Zingiberaceae of Thailand. It includes the distribution and descriptions of several species. It is available on the web in PDF format at http://www.iupac.org/symposia/proceedings/phuket97/sirirugsa.html.
From Katherine Russell (russell@ais.oberlin.edu) - there is a good writeup and bibliography for some of the gingers found in Southeast Asia in the handbooks published by PROSEA (plant resources of SE Asia): I found some nice articles in volume 12, Medicinal and Poisonous Plants, and volume 13, Spices. There's some nice info about cultural practices, and names in different languages as well as the usual botanical stuff. I was able to get the books on interlibrary loan through my local college library, apparently though you can also order them from the Netherlands. Unfortunately there is the limitation of geography so if you're looking for something not used in SE Asia, hard luck. I think PROSEA has a sister organization which is undertaking a similar project for Africa, but it's still getting underway. That leaves a lot of the world... leftover.
Copyright © 1999-2001 Dave Skinner