Tas. 5250. 
AMOMUM Cuust1. 
Golden-Nowered Grain of Paradise. 
Nat. Ord. ZINGIBERACE®.—MONANDRIA MonoGynIA. 
Gen. Char. (Vide supra, TaB, 4603.) 
Amomum OClusii; glabrum, caule elongato folioso, foliis lineari- v. oblongo- 
lanceolatis longe acuminatis, scapis floriferis radicalibus paucifloris, bracteis 
oblongo-cymbiformibus emarginato-cuspidatis, corolla aures lobis latera- 
libus patentibus lanceolato-subulatis, dorsali amplo obovato-oblongo latera- 
libus longiore, labello late ovato-spathulato subacuto margine integro, fila- 
mento basi utrinque appendicula subulata aucto, connectivo apice obtuso, 
cornubus lateralibus:subulatis porrectis. 
Amomum Clusii. Smith in Rees’ Cyclop, (fide Hanbury). 
Amomum Danielli. H,f. (quoad colorem floris), in Kew Journ. Bot. 1852, v. 4. 
p. 129. 
The determination of the various Amoma of Western Africa, 
several of which yield the seeds called “ Bastard Melligetta 
and “ Grains of Paradise,” have long been a source of great 
difficulty both to the botanist and pharmacologist ; and our ef- 
forts to clear up the subject, by means of correspondence with 
our own and other collectors in that country, and by figuring spe- 
cimens cultivated at Kew, have hitherto resulted in little beyond 
good illustrations and further confusion of synonymy. — This has 
arisen very much from the necessity of having, besides dried 
specimens of leaves, flowers, and fruit (which appear at different 
seasons), flowers preserved in spirits or acid, and notes of their 
colour. Unfortunately some collectors have not hitherto been 
successful either in matching them properly, nor in making sure 
that the seeds sent home for germination, belonged to the plant 
to which they referred them. In the case of this species, the 
result has been the confounding of a golden-flowered and red- 
flowered species, by Dr. Hooker, in the ‘ Kew Journal of Bo- 
tany ;’ he being misled by Dr. Daniell’s confident assertion that 
the plant there figured had yellow flowers, and that the seeds, 
JUNE lst, 1861. 
