CHAPTER XI GINGER Ginger black or ginger white Will furnish warmth in coldest night. Without ginger how many would miss A ginger cookie for little Sis. GINGER (_officinale_ (_Roscoe_) _amomum zingiber, national order zingiberaceoe Linn., monandria monogynia_). French, _Gingembre_; German, _Ingwer_; Latin, _Zingiber_; Italian, _Zenzevero_; Spanish, _Gengibre_; Portuguese, _Gengiuare_. As a rule, spices grow above ground, but ginger is an exception, it being the roots or rhizomes of Zingiber. The root is herbaceous and creeping, tuberous, and of a somewhat flattened roundish form, marked with rings. It is difficult to fix the original habits of the ginger plant, and it appears to be an unsettled question as to its native country, whether it be Asia or Brazil, but in its wild state it would suggest Asia. Its history dates back to a very early period. Vincent’s “Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients” speaks of the imports of it from the Red Sea into Alexandria in the second century. It has been known in India from a very remote period, the Greek and Latin names for ginger being derived from the Sanskrit. The Greek name for ginger is conceded to have been taken from its Persian application. Ginger is indigenous to China, and many leading authorities aver that it derives its name ginger in China, where it formerly grew abundantly, and that the plant was first called gingi at that place. It was common in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and was next in value to pepper, which was most common of all spices. It was thought by the Greeks and Romans to have been a product of Southern Arabia and was received by them by way of the Red Sea. Pliny describes it as coming from Arabia. The Romans fixed a duty on ginger, which is mentioned among other Indian spices, and ginger is mentioned in the lists of dutiable goods of the Middle Ages, showing that it constituted an important item of commerce between Europe and the East. This duty was levied in Paris in 1296; Barcelona, 1221; Marseilles, 1228. Ginger appears to have been well known in England before the Norman conquest, since it is often referred to in the Anglo-Saxon books of the eleventh century.