Given its large size, this member of the Ginger family is named Temu Gajah, which means Elephant Ginger. The rhizome of Elephant Ginger is bitter and pungent and is used medicinally. This painting can be found in the first volume of the the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings. The collection consists of 477 watercolours of flora and fauna that had been painted for William Farquhar when he was the Resident of Malacca between 1803 and 1818, before he took up the post of the first Resident of Singapore from 1819 to 1823.
