A tall, leafy herb with a distinctive spiralling stem, growing in clumps at forest edges and moist bushland.
Spiral ginger or bush ginger (Costus afer, family Costaceae) is a perennial herb up to 4 metres tall, growing from rhizomes, with leaves arranged in a spiral up the stem. It is widely used in traditional medicine in Africa, mainly gathered from the wild, which has reduced its numbers in some places, especially in Ethiopia. It is often planted in home gardens for medicine and is widely used for ceremonial and religious purposes.
It grows in tropical Africa from Senegal east to Ethiopia and south to Tanzania, Malawi and Angola, on the shaded floor of rainforest and lowland secondary forest and in moist places in forest and at forest edges, up to 1,400 metres. It prefers very fertile, moist but well-drained acid soil and some shade, though it also grows in full sun. It is a very vigorous plant and flowers and fruits throughout the year, depending on soil moisture. Fresh seed germinates best at 20°C, and the plant is easily propagated from pieces of rhizome or stem about 2.5 cm long.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
Widely used in traditional medicine for stomach ache, diabetes, arthritis, cough, malaria, and eye complaints, and as a snakebite antidote.
The tart, acid-flavored leaves are eaten; the rhizome is sometimes used as a spice.
A wild and semi-cultivated forest-edge herb, also used for wrapping food and for matting.