326 
SPICES 
CHAP. 
Its most remarkable feature is that the racemes instead 
of spreading over the surface of the ground are borne 
perpendicularly from the bulbs, and the fruit grows in 
clusters of five and seven. This form is best suited for 
growth at higher elevation than the Malabar, and stands 
exposure and wind better. The value of the produce 
is not less than that of Malabar. 
The best figure I have seen of the plant is the 
original one in White’s Malahar Cardamom ; there is 
also a tolerably good coloured figure in Trimen’s Medical 
Botany, but the figure in Schumann’s Zingiheraceae 
published in the “ Pflanzenreich ” is hardly recognisable. 
Schumann distinguishes the forms above described, viz. 
the varieties majus and minus, as species, which I think 
can hardly be maintained. There is also a photograph 
of the plant in the Journal of the Horticultural Society, 
vol. xxxviii. fig. 137. 
HISTORY 
There was a spice known to the Greeks and Eomans 
as cardamomum and amomum, but it appears to be 
certain that these spice plants, whatever they were, were 
not the cardamoms of the present day, although the 
name of this spice, as we know it, is evidently taken 
from these words. 
The spice was known to Indian and Arabic writers 
in very early times. The Indian writer Susruta (about 
the eighth century) mentions it under the Sanskrit 
name Eta, which with variants is the prevailing name 
over India and Arabia, and it is mentioned in the list 
of spices liable to duty at Alexandria in a.d. 176-180. 
It was mentioned by Edrisi as a production of Ceylon 
about A.D. 1154, and was probably a trade spice in 
Europe long before that, though there is no definite 
record of it. Marco Polo does not mention it in his 
travels. Barbosa, the Portuguese traveller, mentions it 
as a product of Malabar coast in 1514. Linschoten 
mentions both the lesser and greater cardamom as used 
in Southern India. Of the former he writes : “It most 
