Mondo Knows Facts
Ginger is an underground stem, not a root
The knobbly piece sold in shops is a rhizome with buds on it Ginger is the rhizome of Zingiber officinale, a reed like tropical plant, and the lumps on a piece are buds that would become new shoots. Cutting the rhizome into sections with a bud each is how the plant is propagated, since it rarely sets seed. Its pungency comes from gingerols, which convert into milder shogaols when the rhizome is dried. It sits in Mondo's food collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: ginger, rhizome, botany
Ginger is an underground stem, not a root: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The knobbly piece sold in shops is a rhizome with buds on it. The figure is taken from Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a food fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Food shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.