GIXGEE. 105 



described by Smith as A. grana Paradisi is identical with A. 

 exscapum of Sims, and the same wood block used to illustrate 

 Smith's plant w^as used by Pereira* to illustrate Hooker's plant. 

 Its seeds are highly aromatic, but do not possess the pungency of 

 the real grains of Paradise. 



A figure of A. Melegueta, published by Eoscoe in his " ]\Ionan- 

 drian Plants of the order Scitamineae," was drawn from a plant 

 raised and flowered in the Botanical Garden, Liverpool, from a 

 seed of Melegueta Pepper or Grains of Paradise of the shops. The 

 identity of the true plant w^ith Eoscoe's representation of it has 

 since been confirmed by Daniel Hanbury, who statesf having 

 frequently germinated the seeds of the Grains of Paradise of 

 commerce, and not only flowered the plants so obtained, but even 

 matured the seeds, thus deciding a question so long discussed by 

 botanists. A figure of A. Melegueta Eoscoe is given by Pereira, in 

 his Mat. Med. ii., pt. 1, p. 245, and a more recent illustration is to 

 be found in Bentley and Trimen's Med. Plants, t. 268. 



The plant has a long, slender, twisted, branched, horizontal 

 rhizome, surrounded with numerous large, loose, persistent, blunt, 

 sheathing bractes. The leaf-bearing barren stems are from three to 

 five and even six feet high, erect, straight, slender and completely 

 enclosed in the very long leaf-sheaths. The leaves are very large, 

 alternate, distichous, sheathing, the sheaths split throughout, 

 very long, close, striate, quite smooth, rounded at the top, and 

 terminating in a short rounded ligule ; the blade (wanting in the 

 lower leaves) six to nine inches long, lanceolate oblong, attenuated 

 at the apex, narrow^ at the base, entire, convolute in vernation, 

 midrib narrow and prominent, lateral veins very fine. The scape 

 is radical, rising but very slightly above the surface of the soil and 

 covered at the base with five or seven imbricated, ovate, concave, 

 pointed and somewhat cuspidate bractes. The calyx is cylindrical, 

 of one leaf, green, spotted with red. The very large cylindrical 

 flow^ers are waxy in appearance, delicately beautiful and expanding 

 in a double border, the outer one in three sections, the middle or 

 largest of which is ovate, the other two linear and opposite. The 

 fruit is a cylindrical, coriaceous capsule, yellow, spotted wdth 

 orange, or sometimes red, supported at the base by imbricated 



* Mat. Med., ii. pt. i. p. 244. 



f Hist, des Drof^iies ii., 459, foot note. 



