“I found myself sitting on the forest floor that was carpeted with wild ginger. The song of the ginger was pouring out of the mouths of its purple flowers, offering me treasures: heart-shaped leaves, rich soil, breezes sighing in the graceful arms of maples, and certain other wordless blessings” (plant spirit medicine, eliot cowan).
This native woodland perennial loves shade and when happy will form a thick groundcover. A purple-brown flower hides beneath heart-shaped leaves. Its spicy root was once used as a substitute for ginger but contains an unknown concentration of the carcinogen aristolochic acid. Some say when cooked it is fine, but the risk is present.
