A perennial herb, 30-80 cm tall, with leafy shoots bearing 3-5(-7) erect leaves and about 3 bladeless, reddish sheaths at the base. Rhizome at the base of the leafy shoots only, composed of more or less globose joints, largely fused, up to 2 cm in diameter, yellow-brown outside, bright yellow inside, fragrant when bruised. Roots tuberous and fleshy, subclavate, 5-30 cm x 0.5-2 cm, colour and fragrance like the rhizome. Leaves alternate, biseriate, erect, hardly fragrant when bruised; sheaths not very robust, 9-19 cm long, together forming a short pseudostem; ligule broadly triangular, up to 1.5 cm long, arachnoid-pubescent, auricled, soon withering; petiole canaliculate, up to 30 cm long, glabrous; blade elliptical-oblong to broadly lanceolate, 12-50 cm x 5-17 cm, dark green, glabrous, with several raised, parallel veins and scattered dots above, pale green, glabrous to arachnoid-pubescent and densely white-dotted below. Inflorescence terminal on leafy shoot, spike-like, 10-15 cm long, almost completely hidden by the upper leaf sheaths, bearing about 10 flowers; peduncle 1-2 cm long; rachis short, crowded with distichous, equitant bracts; flowers far exserted, appearing in succession, situated in the axil of a bract and a bracteole; bracts and bracteoles oblong-lanceolate, 4 cm x 0.7 cm, green; calyx shortly tubular, about 1.5 cm long, apex bifid; corolla with an about 6 cm long white tube and 3 unequal, oblong, up to 1.7 cm long, incurved, pink lobes at apex; labellum (central staminode) patent, oblong-obovate or panduriform, 2-3.5 cm x 1.5-2.5 cm, apex crenate, undulate plicate, upper half pink, lower half white or pale pink, with red-violet dots within; lateral staminodes erect, petaloid, broadly obovate, 1.5-2 cm x 1 cm, pink; stamen with 5 mm long white hairy filament and 5 mm long yellow-white anther with narrow, bilobed, reflexed apical appendage of connective (crest), anther dehiscing longitudinally; pistil with 3-loculed, glabrous ovary 5.5 mm long, stylodes slender, style filiform, stigma protruding beyond the anther, funnel-shaped, yellow-white.

Stomachic, carminative and aphrodisiac (rhizomes and roots).

PROSEA (Plant Resources of South-East Asia) Foundation

Used as a remedy for coughs, indigestion, diarrhea, sprue and colic, and as external treatment for ringworm, rheumatic and post-partum muscular pain, wounds, swollen abdomen and difficult urination in children (rhizomes and roots).