Shampoo Ginger

When a man in the village told me that there was a plant that had unique, attractive and red flowers in his garden area, he, at the time, could not yet show what he meant. After a while, when the season was already dry season, I came back to his garden, and at that time, he immediately showed me the plant with the unique flower he meant.

Even though I've seen those plants, to be honest, I've never seen those flowers before. At first glance I did observe that the plant was indeed ginger-like, but I had no idea that it had such unique flowers.

The man then told me that in the red flowers there was water like juice. He then squeezed one of the flowers, and I saw a clear liquid coming out of the flower. "Try to smell it, this liquid smells like shampoo, right?" he said to me.

I confirmed that, and at that moment I also remembered that I had smelled the same smell on the clothes that Grandma kept in her closet. I'm sure, grandma must have used ingredients that had been processed from some part of this plant, perhaps, from the rhizome. Our older generation in Aceh had many things that we, the current generation, don't know. Various changes in the times made us not inherit much of their knowledge and traditions.

I then found out about this plant, and it turns out that there is a lot of information available. Only, I just found out about this. One of the names that is already known is indeed Shampoo Ginger. In Malay, it is called Lampuyang. The scientific name is Zingiber zerumbet.

The life cycle of this plant is Perennial. When the man told me about it the first time, and he couldn't show it, it was because indeed this plant was not active above the ground because the leafy stems were shriveling and dying, but when the dry season came, the plant came back to life above the ground and flowering.

The red one, turned out to be a mature flower head, before, it was reddish green. Mature flower heads may be more than 10 cm long, looking like a fruit-shaped rattan weave. Almost the top of it, popping small yellowish white flowers. They looked so awesome. If squeezed, the flower head will release a fragrant liquid that looks like clear juice. It's probably what people used to use traditionally to wash their hair and make their hair shiny. Incidentally, the wild ginger or forest ginger that I saw was also not far from a river. I wonder if people in the past would pick these flowers, and take them to the river to wash their hair. It is a plant found in tropical Asia, in the family Zingiberaceae, and its rhizomes have been used for herbal medicine.

(Sources: Zingiber zerumbet; Lempoyang; Pinecone Ginger)

To be honest, I had no experience at all about this before, but this is now a new knowledge for me to share.