1092

 Elettaria cardamomum (L.) Maton

Synonym	:	Amomum cardamomum L.
Family	`	Zingiberaceae
Local name	:	English – Cardamom Malayalam – Elam
Flowering and fruiting period	:	June - November.
Distribution	:	Wild in South India and Sri Lanka.
Uses	:	The seeds are bitter, cooling, pungent, fragrant; cause bilousness, abortifacient, clears head, brain, and mouth, useful in asthma, bronchitis, piles, pruritus, diseases of the bladder, kidney, rectum and the throat.  In nausea and vomiting they are used as a sherbut with pomegranate. Cardamoms are used by the natives in flavouring sweet meats and certain cooked dishes, also a spice and are sometimes chewed in pan with betel leaf (Watt, 1972).
Key botanical characters: Rhizome perennial, thick, hard, woody, horizontal. Leafy shoot 3-4 m tall. Leaves distichous, subsessile or shortly petiolate; lamina 40-80 x 6-9 cm, linear-lanceolate, tip acuminate, glabrous above, slightly pubescent or glabrous below; ligule short, 3 mm, bifid, membranous, glabrous. Inflorescence produced directly from the rhizome, very rarely terminal; peduncle 30-40 cm, prostrate or rarely erect.   Bracts 2.5-3.5 x 0.6-1 cm, lanceolate, acute, persistent, but becoming fimbriate with age, glabrous. Each bract subtends a cincinnus of 3-7 flowers. Flowers white with violet stripes in the centre, glabrous.  Capsule subtrigonous, 1-3 cm long, striate. Seeds many.