the essential oil of hedychium spicatum rhizome is used in perfumery and medicines. the rhizome is reported to be stomachic, carminative, a bronchodilator stimulant and a tonic. for studying seasonal variation of the composition of its volatiles, rhizomes of h. spicatum were collected from the council of scientific and industrial research-institute of himalayan bioresource technology (csir-ihbt), palampur, himachal pradesh, india. to study the spatial diversity in essential oil content and composition, the rhizomes were collected from five different locations of himachal pradesh. essential oils obtained by hydro-distillation were evaluated for their chemical composition by gas chromatography (gc) and gc/mass spectrometry (gc/ms) analyses. twenty-two compounds were identified from the rhizome oil with major components 1,8-cineole, -eudesmol, -pinene and 10-epi--eudesmol. all the essential oil samples were evaluated for their antioxidant activity by 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (dpph) radical-scavenging activity. the essential oil extracted from the rhizomes collected from biling had highest antioxidant activity; hence, it was also tested for cytotoxic activity against c-6, a549 and siha cell lines.