Plant · P-635

Lesser Galangal

Alpinia officinarum

Lesser galangal is the smaller and sharper of the two galangals - the hard dark rhizome tastes of pepper and ginger at once, and it has been traded as spice and medicine for well over a thousand years, reaching Europe from China around the ninth century. The leaves are edible too and the fruit stands in for cardamom. It is genuinely tropical, with a hard floor around 59 F (15 C), and it is fussier about soil chemistry than most of its relatives: it wants acid ground and will not take alkaline or calcareous soil at all. Partial shade suits it better than open sun, which makes it an understorey crop rather than a bed plant, and it widens by branching rhizome into a clump that harvesting is what keeps in check.