440 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
869 to 885. In a list of produce from a country he 
called “ Sila ” (probably China), he mentions galangal. 
Edrisi, in 1153, mentions it among the productions of 
the Far East brought from India and China to Aden, 
the port then used for Asiatic produce coming to Egypt 
and Europe. Garcia da Orta says it was unknown to 
the ancient Greeks, and only imperfectly to the Arabs. 
He distinguishes between the greater and the lesser 
galangal, giving the correct Malay name Lancuas 
(Lankwas) to the former. 
Marco Polo mentions it as produced in abundance at 
Kachanfu (near the Hoang-ho), at Kinsai (Tokien), and 
Kuelin-fu (Kien-ning-fu) in the same province. It was 
imported very early into England with pepper and 
other spices, and is often mentioned in the literature of 
the Middle Ages. It was then mainly used as the 
culinary spice. 
In England it was called galingale, a name which 
has also been applied to the sedge, Cyperus longus. 
Cultivation and Use . — The plant seems never to 
have been cultivated elsewhere than in Southern China. 
Like all plants of the ginger tribe, it is easily propagated 
from portions of the rhizome. 
The commercial spice consists of pieces of the rhizome 
to 3 in. long, rarely f in. through, and commonly 
much less, brown, cylindric, often branched, and marked 
with the rings left by the fall of the scale leaves. It is 
dry and firm, tough and shrivelled, rather paler inside 
(but never white, or buff colour, as in the greater 
galangal), with a darker central column. It is aromatic 
and spicy, somewhat pungent in taste. 
The rhizome contains ^ to per cent of volatile oil, 
an acrid soft resin, an extractive, gum, starch, a fixed 
oil, and a peculiar crystallisable body, Kaempferid, 
which is tasteless. The odour is due to the essential oil. 
This oil is a greenish yellow, slightly viscid liquid of a 
camphor-like odour. Its only known constituent is 
Cineol. 
Oil of galangal was manufactured very early, and is 
