122 ODOEOGRAPHIA. 



thej are used as a substitute for the true cardamom of Malabar, 

 which they very much resemble. Its perenoial root is creeping 

 under the surface of the soil like tliat of ginger, but smaller, less 

 fleshy, more ligneous and white ; from which descend and spread 

 many fleshy fibres. The stems are biennial, rising obliquely to the 

 height of two or four feet, about as thick as a stout rattan, invested 

 in the smooth deep green sheaths of the leaves. The leaves are 

 alternate, bifarious, short-petioled on their smooth stem-clasping 

 sheaths ; from broad-lanceolate below to narrow-lanceolate at top, 

 entire and smooth on both sides ; point long and very fine ; length 

 from six to twelve inches. The spikes are radical, sessile, oblong, 

 appearing amongst the stems, half immersed in the earth, loosely 

 imbricated with one-flowered, lanceolate, acute, villous, nervous, 

 scariose, ash-coloured bractes ; when old, their brittle tops are often 

 broken off. Besides the exterior one-flowered bractes just men- 

 tioned, there is an inner striated, downy, scariose, two-toothed 

 tubular one, inserted round the base of the germ. The flowers open 

 in succession and are not very conspicuous. The calyx is clavate, 

 tubular, downy, three-toothed, length of the tube of the corolla 

 which is slender and slightly incurved. The exterior border of the 

 corolla is sub-equally divided into three pellucid divisions. The 

 lip or inner border is rather longer than the exterior great border, 

 somewhat three-lobed, with a crenate curled margin ; the middle 

 lobe is yellow, with two rosy lines leading up to it from the mouth 

 of the tube. The filament is scarcely half so long as the border of 

 the corolla, incurved over the mouth of the tube. There is a 

 subulate horn on each side of the base of the filament (as in A. 

 maximum) and nearly its length. The anther is double, large, 

 fleshy, with a large three-lobed concave crest, the stigma rising 

 through a deep groove between the two poUeniferous lobes. The 

 germ is downy and crowned with the two nectarial scales within 

 the base of the tube of the corolla ; in this species they are short 

 and truncated. 



A. Maximum, Eoxb., "Mor. Ind.," i., p. 41. "Java 



Cardamoms " or " Great Winged Cardamoms." These fruits are 

 about the size of a gooseberry, growing in bunches of 30 or 40 on 

 a short thick stalk. Each fruit is furnished with 9 or 10 prominent, 

 short, coarsely dentate membranous wings about an eighth of an 

 inch deep, arranged in rows lengthways. The seeds are somewhat 



