GRANA PARADISI. 651 



Habhal-Jiabashi} According to Beke,- it is conveyed to the market of 

 Baso (10° N. lat.), in Southern Abyssinia, from Tumhe, a region lying 

 in about 9° X. lat. and 35° E. long.; thence it is carried to Massowah, 

 on the Red Sea, and shipped for India and Arabia. Von Heuglin'* 

 speaks of it as brought from the Galla country. It is not improbable 

 that it is the same fruit which Speke* saw growing in 1862 at Uganda, 

 in lat. 0°, and which he says is strung like a necklace by the Wagonda 

 people. Under the name of Heel Habashee, Korarima cardamoms were 

 contributed in 1873 from Shoa to the Vienna exhibition; we have also 

 been presented, in 1877, with an excellent specimen of them, recently 

 imported, by Messrs. Schimmel tSc Co., Leipzig. 



Pereira proposed for the plant the name of Anwriiiim Korarima, but 

 it has never been botanically described. It would appear from the above 

 statements that it must be indigenous to the whole mountainous region 

 of Eastern Africa, from the Victoria Nyanza lake (Uganda) to the 

 countries of Tumhe, Gurague, and Shoa, south and south-eastward of 

 Abyssinia. 



GRANA PARADISI. 



Semina Cardiimomi ruajoi'is, Piper Melecjaeta ; Grains of Paradise, 

 Guinea Grains, Melegueta Pepper ; F, Grains de Paradis, Mani- 

 yuette; G. Paradieskoiiier. 



Botanical Origin — Amomuni Melegueta Roscoe — an herbaceous, 

 reed-like plant, 3 to 5 feet high, producing on a scape rising scarcely an 

 inch above the ground, a delicate, wax-like, pale purple flower, w^hich 

 is succeeded by a smooth, scarlet, ovoid fruit, 3 to_ 4 inches in length, 

 rising out of sheathing bracts.'* 



It varies considerably in the dimensions of all its parts, according to 

 more or less favourable circumstances of soil and climate. In Demerara, 

 where the plant grows luxuriously in cultivation, the fruit is as large 

 as a fine pear, measuring with its tubular pai*t as much a.s 5 inches in 

 length by 2 inches in diameter ; on the other hand, in some parts of 

 West Africa it scarcely exceeds in size a large filbert. It has a thick 

 fleshy pericai-p, enclosing a colourless acid pulp of pleasant taste, in 

 which are imbedded the numerous seeds. 



A. Melegueta is widely distributed in tropical West Africa, occurring 

 along the coast regdon from Sierra Leone to Congo. The littoral region, 

 termed, in allusion to its producing grains of paradise, the Grain Coast, 

 Pepper Coast, or Melegueta Coa^t, lies between Liberia and Cape 

 Palmas ; or, more exactly, between Capes Mesurado (Montserrado) and 

 St. Andrews. The Gold Coast, whence the seeds are now principally 

 exported, is in the Gulf of Guinea, further eastward. 



Of the distribution of the plant in the interior we have no exact 

 information. Yet the name Melegueta refers to the ancient empire of 



^ So named by Forskal in 1775 {Materia ^ Jieise nach Abessinien, Jena, 1868. 223. 



Medicxi Kahirina, 151. n. 41) who says * J ourmal of the discovery of the source of 



'^frequens In re cullnaria et medicd, loco the JS^ile, 1863. 648. 



plperis. " * Fig. in Bentley and Trimen's Medical 



- Letters on the commerce of Abyssinia, Plants, part 30 (1878). 

 etc., addressed to the Foreign Office, 1852: 

 4. 16. 20. 



