168 
RIDLEY. 
6. ZINGIBER Adans. 
Herbs with short, thick, more or less aromatic rhizomes. Stems leafy, 
the leaves lanceolate or elliptic. Spike from the rhizome, rarely on the 
leafy stem, sessile or usually peduncled, cylindric, conic, or fusiform, 
with large, dense, yellow, red, or green bracts inclosing one or more 
flowers.. Calyx tubular, three-lobed, short. Corolla-tube rather longer 
than the bract, with oblong or lanceolate lobes, usually white, or creamy, 
sometimes marbled black. Staminodes wanting. Lip 3-lobed, median 
lobe longer. Stamen- filament linear; anther-cells linear, the connective 
prolonged into a long curved beak. Style as long. Capsule thin-walled, 
splitting into three valves. Seed black, angled, arillate. 
Species about 30, Indo-Malaya to northern Australia. 
There are two or three species, perhaps more, in the material submitted, too 
incomplete to describe. These plants have the spikes so full of water that they 
require the flowers to be separately dried, or they quickly rot. 
Spikes terminal on the leafy stem; bracts narrow, oblong 1. Z. mollis 
Spikes radical. 
Spikes glabrous, cylindric, blunt 2. Z. Zerumbet 
Spikes pubescent, acute , 3. Z. pubisquama 
1. Z. mollis sp. nov. 
Stems solitary, slender, about 60 cm tall, the rhizome short. Leaves 
narrowly lanceolate, 12 to 15 cm long, 2 cm wide, acuminate, caudate, 
narrowed at the base, not petioled, the upper surface glabrous, beneath 
sprinkled with white hairs; ligule papery, rounded, entire, glabrous; 
sheath sparingly hairy. Spike terminal, cylindric, 6 cm long. Bracts 
yellow, narrowly oblong, apex rounded, 2 cm long and nearly 1 cm wide 
at the base. Bra'cteoles narrower, oblong, glandular-dotted on the edge. 
Ovary glabrous. Calyx thinly spathaeeous, tubular, bifid into two lan- 
ceolate lobes, 2 cm long. Corolla- tube cylindric, 2.5 cm long, the lobes 
lanceolate, acuminate, acute, 1.5 cm long. Lip trilobed, rather large, the 
lateral lobes nearly as long as the middle one, which is entire and blunt. 
Stamen-connective beak-like, slender, curved. Capsule oblong, red, 
dehiscing, yellow inside. Seeds black. 
Luzon, Province of Benguet, Baguio, For. Bur. 1/ 886 , \91k Curran ; Mount 
Tonglon, Merrill 1/81/3 : Province of Pampanga, Mount Abu, Bur. Sci. 1985 Fox- 
worthy, altitude 1,330 m. Negbos, Elmer 981/3. 
var. ft. Leaves more elliptic in outline; ligule and sheath densely 
pubescent. Spike on a leafless peduncle from the rhizome. Peduncle 
10 to 15 cm long, with distant tubular sheaths. 
Luzon, Province of Tayabas, Mount Banajao, Elmer 8133: Province of Pam- 
panga, Mount Abu, Bur. Sci. 1991 Foxworthy. One of the rarest gingers in this 
locality, growing in loose soil in shaded ravines at 700 meters, inflorescence red 
(Elmer) ; forested slopes in ravines at 1,360 meters (Foxworthy). 
This ginger seems to be allied to Z. officinale as much as to any other species, 
and like it has the spike sometimes borne on the top of the leafy stem and also 
on the rhizome like the majority of the species of the genus. 
