15 photographs › Summary
Curcuma zanthorrhiza, known as temulawak, Java ginger, Javanese ginger, or Javanese turmeric is a plant species, belonging to the ginger family. It is known in Javanese as temulawak, in Sundanese as koneng gede (large turmeric) and in Madurese as temu labak. The scientific name is sometimes written as Curcuma xanthorrhiza, but this is an orthographical variant.
Quoted from Wikipedia, "Curcuma zanthorrhiza", CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the genus · Curcuma
Curcuma is a genus of plants in the ginger family Zingiberaceae that contains such species as turmeric and Siam tulip. They are native to Southeast Asia, southern China, the Indian Subcontinent, New Guinea and northern Australia. Some species are reportedly naturalized in other warm parts of the world such as tropical Africa, Central America, Florida, and various islands of the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans. More on Wikipedia ›
Quoted from Wikipedia, "Curcuma", CC BY-SA 4.0.
Cultivation
Grouped as a tropical foliage plant, listed under the genus Curcuma in the archetype table, and Kew describes it as “rhizomatous geophyte”, “wet tropical”.
How this section is made
Each card states this species' habitat figures with their sources, and what two fixed rules read from them; nothing here says what the plant does, wants or tolerates. The rules · the terms.
Group. Listed under the genus Curcuma in the archetype table, and Kew describes it as “rhizomatous geophyte”, “wet tropical”. A group is taken only where Kew's description of the species agrees with the table's listing. The table gives no figure and no prose; the cold floor is the habitat's alone.
Climate across the habitat
Natural habitat
Photographs
Photographs: (c) Jason Alexander, some rights reserved (CC BY) (3); Ariyanto, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (3).
Related
Other Curcuma 35 in the reference
Curcuma aeruginosa Zingiberaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, Kurt Stüber
Curcuma alismatifolia Siam Tulip Photo: CC BY, Oleg Kosterin
Curcuma amada Mango ginger Photo: Public domain, vicharam
Curcuma aromatica Wild turmeric Photo: CC BY, harrier Curcuma attenuata Zingiberaceae Curcuma aurantiaca Zingiberaceae 
Curcuma australasica Australian Wild Turmeric Photo: CC BY, Matt B
Curcuma caesia Black Tumeric Photo: CC BY, Ashwin A Curcuma codonantha Zingiberaceae Curcuma colorata Zingiberaceae Curcuma elata Zingiberaceae 
Curcuma gracillima Zingiberaceae Photo: CC BY-SA, David J. Stang all 36 ›Names & registers
The record
Every figure here is derived from public data by a stated rule and names its source; nothing about this species is written for its page by a person or by AI, apart from the marked, credited quotations. How →
Where this page came from built 2026-10-22
gbif.species answeredasked 2026-10-22gbif.synonyms answeredasked 2026-10-22gbif.vernacular answeredasked 2026-10-22names fetched 2026-10-22wcvp.distribution answeredas of 2026-06-04gbif.occurrences answeredas of 2026-10-21GBIF occurrence download https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.hbdw64, of 2026-10-21climate nothing to reportasked 2026-10-221 in-range record, none placed to within 10 kmwikidata answeredasked 2026-10-22IPNI and POWO linked by Kew's number for Curcuma zanthorrhiza Roxb. (the item's: IPNI 872392-1, POWO 796485-1)wikipedia answeredasked 2026-10-22inat.photos.wild answeredasked 2026-10-22from iNaturalist's open data of 2026-09-27: research-grade observations with an open-licence photograph, the 24 whose photographs iNaturalist received last (the open data holds no votes); filled 2026-10-22inat.photos.cultivated not askedgbif.media answeredasked 2026-10-22none of the photographs on this page is credited to GBIF: those shown are other sources', and GBIF's were the same photographs or were set aside by the photograph rulescommons answeredasked 2026-10-22openalex not askednot yet asked for this reference; a later fill takes the papers from OpenAlex's snapshotEvery source is recorded as having answered, reported nothing, refused, failed, not been asked, or answered twice where one answer is taken (“not taken: two items answered”), and, for a source asked when this page was built, when: the figures are as the source held them that day; a source read from a file (Kew's World Checklist, a GBIF download) says "as of" the file's day instead; a row carried from an earlier build of the page names that build instead. Only “nothing to report” is ever shown as an absence. Records came from 5 datasets via GBIF.org; each carries its own licence.