Etlingera Essay

Literature Review

2.1 Etlingera elatior

This plant is a rhizomatous perennial herbs than can grow up to 6m tall. The hairless leaves of this herb is in lanceolate shape and it can be up to 85cm long, with 18 cm wide. The collection of the flowers, inflorescences has bright red bracts and have a pine-coned shaped that usually stand atop stems. This type of flower can be present in red, white or pink color. The bract of this flower are tough and shiny, that they look like a phony flower. This plant are mainly pollinated by spider hunter birds. Some other common names this plant are known with are Ginger Bud, Javanese Aromatic Ginger, Torch Lily, and Wild Ginger.

2.1.1 Taxonomical Idenfication

Etlingera is a genus of Indo-Pacific terrestrial and perennial herbs in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, consisting more than 100 different species native to Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and widely cultivated and neutralized in South East Asia (Lachumy et al., 2010). This species is synonymous with Phaeomeria speciosa, Alpinia elatior, Elettaria speciosa, Nicolaia elatior and Nicolaia speciosa (Azlan, M., 2008). The taxonimical

UV is harmful to human skin because of its production of various types of cellular damage, most notably oxidative damage and two major types of DNA damage: cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers and 6,4-photoproducts (Agar and Young, 2005). Once human skin is exposed to UV radiation, a number of reactions such as inflammatory and oxidation would occur. The skin tissue has membrane phospholipids that will be damaged by UV-induced active oxygen. Active oxygen is one of the species that induces skin pigmentation. Thus, in order to prevent the production of active oxygen, inhibition of melagonesis has to be