cardamom ginger
Alani Davis (Fri, 31 Jan 2014 14:46:11 PST)
At least at for a couple years the plant Logee's was selling as cardamom
was the shy to flowering Alpinia spp. Tim was describing earlier in this
thread. It is a great foliage plant and the smell is nice but to get
flowers it needs a warm frost free situation whether latitude or
greenhouse. It has creamy white flowers veined with yellow and red in the
throat that are fairly similar to shell ginger Alpinia zerumbet. I have
never seen true Elettaria cardamomum in person, but it was my understanding
that it only thrived in tropical montane habitat similar to coffee. where
the temperature didn't get below freezing but day time high temperatures
were not high either. I was also told by a friend who has seen the plant in
commercial cultivation, that true cardamom did not have aromatic foliage
unlike the plants commonly identified as cardamom in the plant trade.
Alani Davis
Tallahassee, Florida
On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 5:19 PM, Leo A. Martin <leo@possi.org> wrote:
Years ago Logees Greenhouses in Connecticut sold what they called
Elettaria cardamomum,
but they don't list it on their Web site now. I have been growing it for
nearly 30 years
and giving pieces to other plant friends.
It is nearly indestructible in a container, but I have never exposed it to
frost. It
flowered once in my mother's garden in southern California, where she
grows it in a
raised bed. Her plant gets well over a meter tall. I don't have a photo of
the flowers
and didn't see them.
The leaves are quite papery and are borne in two ranks, which is expected
of true
cardamom. The entire plant is strongly aromatic, with the expected scent.
Leo Martin
Phoenix Arizona USA
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