Zingiber barbatum (meik-thalin or meik tha-lin) is a medicinal, therapeutic ginger found in Myanmar.

Eleven amplified primer sets gave a total of 175 bands and exhibited 92.15% polymorphism across intraspecies specimens.

[2][3] In Nathaniel Wallich's 1830 compendium Plantae Asiaticae Rariores: or, Descriptions and figures of a select number of unpublished East Indian plants, he describes Z. barbatum in nuanced detail:

[This] species approaches nearest to Zingiber squarrosum of William Roxburgh, which I found abundantly about Rangoon, but differs in having [much] broader, convex and ventricose bracts, ending in a very long cylindric point.

The spikes issue from the creeping roots, near the stems, or from the base of the latter, and are barely elevated above the surface of the earth; they are sometimes compound, that is, a spikelet is produced from one or two of the lowermost bracts.