SOME RARE KINDS OF CARDAMOM. 



99 



Botanical 



a 

 Cardamom. 



indebted to Mr. Lockhart, of Shanghai, and to Mr. Lobscheid, of 

 Hong Kong, for' specimens procured in the drug shops of China. 



The Hairy China Cardamom is sometimes sold attached to 

 the stalk, sometimes removed from it. 



The scape, which when perfect, is about three inches long and 

 reclinate, bears as many as eight or ten capsules upon its supe- 

 rior extremity. The capsules are from six to ten lines in length. 

 In the dried state they are oval, occasionally nearly spherical, 

 more or less three-sided, bluntly pointed with a scar at the 

 summit, rounded at the base, and attached by a pedicel one to 

 two lines long. The pericarp is externally dark brown, marked 

 with obscure longitudinal strive and covered with asperities, 

 which, after soaking in water proved to be short, thick, fleshy, 

 closely-crowded spines. It has when bruised an aromatic and 

 tar-like odour, the seeds have a similar tar-like odour and taste 

 not unmixed with the aromatic warmth of the Malabar Car- 

 damom ; they are angular, and upon the removal of the pericarp 

 remain united in a tbree-lobed mass. 



The scape is densely villous, especially at its upper extremity, 

 but I can detect no hairs upon the pericarp. If Loureiro's 

 Amomum milosum be identical with this species its specific name 

 was probably taken from the short spine-like processes with 

 which the pericarp is beset, and which pericarp Loureiro de- 

 scribed as " exterius obsessum mills multis, crassis" a character, 

 however, more applicable to another species than to this. 



Mr. Lobscheid informs me that this Cardamom is said to 

 grow in the province of Kwang-tung, and in the Yang-yun dis- 

 trict of Southern China. It appears to be frequently used in Medical use 

 medicine by the Chinese. 



Loureiro states of his Amomum villosum, whose Cochin- 

 Chinese name is Sanhon, that it occurs without cultivation in 

 Qui-nhon and Phu-yen provinces of Cochin-China, and that its 

 seeds are exported to China, where they are largely employed 

 in medicine. 



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