Shampoo Ginger

Groovy Plant #1

Hello lovely humans! Thank you for joining me again. Today, I am introducing the new Groovy Plants page! Every week (hopefully, if I get lazy and miss a week, please don’t judge me), I will share a groovy plant with my favourite people (that’s you).

First up is the Shampoo Ginger Plant!

Somewhere amidst my horticultural studies and my Instagram feed, I had heard about this quirky plant. A naturally growing shampoo. I never really imagined I would be living in Costa Rica and have it growing beside the driveway… but hey, not mad about it either. 

Shampoo Ginger (Zingiber zerumbet) is a beautiful tropical plant closely related to culinary ginger. You can eat the rhizomes of this species as well, although I haven’t tried it and therefore, you’re on your own and it’s not my fault if it's disgusting. In Costa Rica, it is known by the name Maraca due to its physical resemblance to the musical instrument. I know what you’re going to ask, and yes, I tried and no, it doesn’t make music. 

Spot the difference!

I made a short video about my trial run making shampoo for the first time, and I’ll include some pictures here. Don’t expect an instructional video because there are already so many on the internet that do a much better job than I could. I just thought my mum would think it was funky (she’s a plant groupie like me), and because it seemed like an awesome opportunity to document an amazing plant! 

The first thing I noticed was that the liquid that came out of these particular shampoo plants wasn’t as thick as I expected. I’d seen videos where the liquid was more akin to gel, but mine was essentially groovy water. I wonder if that is accredited to the genus, the rainfall here, or possibly the time of year I was collecting it. Not a rhetorical question team, hit me up if you know the answers. 

Natures shampoo!

This plant smelled so lovely. Not super strong, but a subtle, herby scent. I collected about half a litre, which wasn’t even close to all that the plant had to offer. I might have collected more but the plant happened to be next to a fire ants nest and there are only so many times a gal can get stung (bitten?) for the sake of shampoo before you gotta get TF outta there. I’m currently very itchy on my legs and butt, gracias hormigas. 

I sifted the liquid to remove any bugs or twigs, there was still a lot of sediment in it which I’m sure you could remove with a cheesecloth or something but I didn’t bother. I did some googling to figure out if you were supposed to add anything to it before using it on your hair. Short answer; do whatever you want. The liquid from the shampoo plant can be used straight from the plant onto your hair. I saw that a bunch of recipes for natural shampoos included plants that were also growing on this property, so I decided to experiment with a few additional ingredients. 

I chose to add Aloe Vera because I have naturally oily hair and aloe is great for cleaning your scalp of oils without actually harming the strands themselves. Also, it apparently contains shitloads of vitamins and antioxidants, so that can’t hurt. After using the shampoo, I realised the aloe actually dries my hair out a little bit, so next time I will also add coconut oil to seal in the moisture. 

I used Neem leaves because neem is antibacterial and has anti-frizz properties. Anti frizz was particularly enticing since my hair has been a sweaty, shapeless, frizz fest since we arrived here and I have resigned myself to perpetual messy buns for the duration of our stay. 

Initially, I wanted to make neem oil, but for that, I needed to make coconut oil first and the internet lied to me about that being easy. It LIES? Consequently, I used ground-up neem leaves and blended them with aloe vera gel instead.  It worked but was not ideal, definitely use oil. Especially coconut oil because it is so good for your hair and smells like the holiday you deserve. 

Aloe Vera and crushed Neem leaves

Time for a trusty pro/con list. 

Pros; I made shampoo yo! Celebrate the small wins. This was new, kinda strange but I did it and I had a lot of fun.

It smelt so lovely and fresh and it was incredibly rewarding knowing every ingredient I was using on my hair. The process was relatively easy and painless. No, not painless. Those fire ants are aptly named, my friends.

Cons; super thin. The Aloe Vera added some volume but because the liquid out of the shampoo plant was, let's be honest, essentially flavoured water, my shampoo came out pretty thin. This means using about ¼ of the bottle for every wash because, as you can imagine, a bunch of it just runs off your head. Also, because my attempt at coconut oil turned into caca and there was no moisturising oil, my scalp was drier than Justin's sense of humour. 

So, will I try again? Hell yeah. The exact same way? No siree. Will I wear boots and insect repellent? Yes, stupid question. Why try this at all? Excellent question.

Because It’s Fun!