Wild ginger, Asarum canadense, clings to the damp humus of shady forest hummocks. Its dense, kidney-shaped leaves usually hide the brownish-purple, foul-smelling flower that grows at ground level to facilitate pollination by crawling insects. Wild ginger spreads by a creeping rhizome. Genus: Asarum, Latin < asaron Greek, a wild ginger Uses: First Peoples taught early white settlers to peel the rhizomatous root for use as a spicy flavouring. To pep up pioneer baked goods, wild ginger root was boiled with sugar as a bread and pastry spice. Many Algonquin tribes of eastern Canada made a wild ginger tea to relieve jumpy heartbeat, although today cardiac arrhythmias are best treated by a doctor. Other native North Americans steeped the roots and poured the liquid into the ear to treat minor earaches.
A pioneer toothpaste of powdered black alder and black oak bark was made palatable by adding an equal portion of ground-up wild ginger root. On the west coast, a Pacific species, Asarum caudatum (caudatus Botanical Latin ‘with a tail,’ referring to the lobes of the calyx which are formed like a long tail) provided a spring tonic tea when Skagits people and their neighbours to the north boiled the leaves of wild ginger.
The common transatlantic species, Asarum europaeum, or Hazlewort, finds herbal use as a anti-asthmatic. Many groups of first North Americans also used high concentrations of the root extract as an emmenagogue, that is, an agent to promote menstruation. As they did of many plants so used, native healers also thought wild ginger extract could induce abortions if given in sufficient strength and dosage. Needless to say, none of these ancient remedies should be taken except under what the taker judges to be competent medical supervision, whether by a shaman or specialist. Modern science has extracted from wild ginger, aristolochic acid, which has some anti-microbial effect, and from the root, a broad-spectrum bactericide of limited use in some prescription cough medicines. Garden Uses: Canadian Wild Ginger can make a good groundcover for moist woodlands or to naturalize in light to dense shade. It grows 4–6 inches tall with a moderate growth rate.
Canadian Wild ginger belongs to a plant family called Aristolochiaceae, the birthwort family, named after its type genus Aristolochia, a plant like Dutchman’s Pipe, believed by the ancients to assist labour in childbirth. Aristolochia < aristos Greek ‘best’ + locheia Greek ‘childbirth’ The English word birthwort may be a partial loan translation from medieval Latin aristolochia. The Latin appears in print 150 years before the English. Wort was the word for plant in Middle English before it was replaced by the Latinate French import plante. In Old English wyrt was a root or an herb. The word persists in dozens of older English plant names like bladderwort, liverwort, lousewort, glasswort, spiderwort, lungwort, saint-john's-wort. Some obscure technical terms in neonatal medicine use the Greek root lochi- ‘childbirth.’ Lochia is the best known such term. Lochia is the chiefly non-placental debris discharged from the uterus and vagina in the first week or two after birth, consisting of blood components like leucocytes, uterine cellular slough, and serous liquids. Etymology of Lochia:Lochia is New Medical Latin, from the classical Greek neuter plural of the adjective lochios ‘of childbirth,’ from lochos Greek ‘childbirth.’ Lochos is related to our English verb lie and has many relatives in the vast Indo-European language family. Check out these related words: liggen, ligen, lien Middle English, from licgan Old English; akin to ligen Old High German ‘to lie,’ liggja Old Norse ‘to lie,’ lectus Latin ‘bed,’ lechos Greek ‘bed,’ lechesthai Greek ‘to lie down,’ hence lochos Greek ‘childbirth’ or ‘lying-in ,’ lige Old Irish ‘bed,’ ‘grave,’ lezati Old Slavic ‘to lie.’
Lochiometra occurs when the uterus is swollen because of retained lochia. (metra, Greek ‘uterus,’ ‘womb.’ Lochiorrhea is an abnormally voluminous discharge of this debris. (rhoia Greek ‘a flowing’) Lochiostasis: Rarely the uterus retains this lochia and it must be removed by clinical means. Dyslochia is found infrequently in medical literature as a ‘cover’ term for any abnormal lochial discharges. Alochia is total absence of any lochial discharge. (a- Greek ‘not’. This negating use of prefixal alpha is called “alpha privative” in Classics. In the international English scientific vocabulary of technical terms, there are literally thousands of words that begin with this “depriving” alpha. Common words include atheist, abyss, agnostic, apathy, asphalt, atom, anemia, anonymous, and anorexic.
If you enjoyed the story of the origin of this plant’s name, buy my book Canadian Garden Words available online and to order at any bookstore. With trowel in hand, I dig into the colorful history of plant names: annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees and Canadian wildflowers. I unearth entertaining facts on how plants got their names and why. Every gardener will be glad to have this volume added to their green-lore bookshelf.
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