6o8 
Cardamom  Cultivation  in  Mysore. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm 
\      Dec,  I877. 
time  each  rhizome  will  have  grown  up  two  feet  ;  the  garden  must  be 
annually  weeded.  When  they  have  reached  the  height  of  about  four 
feet,  or  say  in  the  third  year,  a  little  culling  will  be  required,  for  each 
plant  must  have  six  feet  of  clear  ground  left  round  it.  In  removing 
superfluous  plants,  care  must  be  exercised  in  preserving  the  strongest 
and  healthiest  specimens.  In  the  fifth  year  the  plants  will  give  a  good 
crop,  and  will  probably  continue  to  do  so  for  the  following  seven  years, 
when  they  will  begin  to  present  a  sickly  and  exhausted  appearance. 
It  will  then  be  necessary  to  select  some  large  trees  from  the  surround- 
ing jungle,  and  fell  them  right  across  the  sickly  plots.  This  is  gene- 
rally done  during  the  months  of  February  and  March,  when  the  lands 
were  originally  prepared  for  cardamoms,  but  may  also  be  done  with 
great  advantage  some  month  earlier.  Young  plants  will  then,  spring 
up  as  before,  and  many  of  the  old  plants  will  have  their  stems  and 
and  racemes  killed  by  the  fall,  but  from  their  rhizomes  fresh  stems 
will  shoot,  and  the  plants  will  bear  with  increased  vigor  for  the  next 
eight  years,  when  the  same  process  of  renovation  will  have  to  be  gone 
through  again.  The  year  in  which  the  forest  trees  are  thus  felled  the 
cardamom  plots  naturally  give  but  little  or  nothing,  and  during  the 
ensuing  year  but  a  light  crop  will  be  gathered  ;  but  this  very  much 
depends  upon  the  quality  of  the  soil,  and  on  this  also  depends  the  early 
or  late  coming  into  bearing  of  the  original  garden.  A  cardamom  jun- 
gle, if  thus  carefully  worked,  never  becomes  exhausted,  and  the  culti- 
vation may  be  continued  on  the  same  land  for  an  indefinite  period. 
One  rhizome  will  often  have  over  twenty  stems,  and,  as  these  die  ofF 
(and  they  seldom  last  longer  than  seven  or  eight  years),  fresh  ones 
spring  up  to  supply  their  place.  The  fruit  is  occasionally  borne  on  the 
upper  part  of  the  stem,  but  this  is  extremely  rare,  and  I  may  mention 
that  in  Munzerabad  I  have'never  seen  or  heard  of  an  instance  of  this 
departure  from  the  ordinary  habit  of  the  plant.  When  from  the  stem  four 
racemes  are  thrown  out  it  is  called  by  the  natives  the  true  or  full  crop  ; 
if  three  only,  three-quarter  crop  ;  if  two,  half  crop  ;  and  if  one  only, 
quarter  crop.  One  raceme  will  have  from  eight  to  fourteen  branches, 
and  each  branch  from  three  to  six  pedicles.  When  the  plant  is  grown 
under  the  most  favorable  conditions,  these  branches  are  grown  close 
together ;  when,  however,  the  conditions  are  unfavorable,  the  racemes 
are  long  and  weak,  and  the  branches  far  apart. — your.  Applied  Science^ 
Oct.  1,  1877,  fr°m  Elliott's  Planter  in  Mysore. 
