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CARDAMOMS 
343 
proportion of the flowers are unfertilised. The flowers 
of this plant are fertilised by insects, and it frequently 
happens with plants in the tropics that the first 
flowers produced by a plant, especially if new to its 
locality, fail to set fruit, as the insects which can and 
do fertilise it appear not to have found the flowers. 
There does not seem to be any record from Ceylon 
or India as to what insects fertilise the flowers, but it is 
probably effected by some species of bee or possibly a 
In the Singapore Botanic Gardens I found a Dipteron 
visiting the flowers, from which it was sucking honey, 
licking with its long tongue the purple streaks on the 
lip and the base of the stamen. The fly was \ in. 
long, mostly dull ochre yellow, the eyes, centre of 
thorax, and six longitudinal lines -down the abdomen 
black. It is one of the fruit flies [Dacidae), I did not 
see it actually fertilise the flowers. 
The importance of the attendance of the fertilising 
insect at the right time must be very great, and its 
absence probably accounts for the smallness of the crops 
on some occasions. 
The plants flower somewhat irregularly in Kanara 
in April and May ; in Ceylon almost all the year 
round, but chiefly from January to May. Those grown 
in the Singapore Gardens flowered in the early part 
of the year, but continued rather irregularly till much 
later. 
The fruits form in June and July, and ripen in 
August, or the beginning of September, lasting till April 
in Ceylon, from September to December being the 
heaviest cropping time. In Bombay they chiefly ripen 
in September and October. 
They are said to require light showery weather 
during the season of flowering ; absence of this causes a 
failure to crop, and Mollison recommends protecting the 
growing fruit by a light covering of leaves and brush- 
wood when the rains are heavy during ripening. 
As the flowers on the scape do not appear simul- 
