Plant · P-641

Myoga

Zingiber mioga

Myoga is a shade-tolerant Japanese ginger relative grown not for its rhizome but for its flower buds and young shoots, harvested from a standing clump so a patch can be cropped every year without ever being dug up. The pale yellow buds and blanched shoots carry a spicy, aromatic flavour, milder than the pungency of culinary ginger, and are pickled, added to soups and tempura, or used as a garnish for raw fish. Unusually cold-hardy for a ginger, it dies back to the rhizome each winter and tolerates deep shade under a deciduous canopy where few other edible plants will crop.