LONG-SEEDED AMOMCM.

091

■Amo'mum angustifo'Hum, Sonnerat .—The Greatest or Madagascar

Car' damom.

Amomum madagascariense, Lamarck .

V s species is a native of Madagascar , growing in marshy ground, and was first

|,, a uaiuc ui iridud^asini, 111 uiaiauj ^iuuuu, aim vras nisi,

lr| bed by Sonnerat (Voyage aux Indes, t. ii. p. 242). Its fruit is the cardamomum

majus of Matthiolus (Comment, in vi. lib. Diosc. Venet. 1583),Geoffrey (Mat. Med. ii. 366), Smith (Rees' Cyclop, art. Mel-legetta ), and Geiger (Handb. d. Pharm. Bd. ii.) In Dr.Burgess’s Collection of Materia Medica at the College of

*9ascar Cardamom.

Physicians, there are several fine specimens (from one of

which the accompanying figure, 126, was taken), marked.“ Cardamomum maximum Matthioli.”

The capsule is ovate, pointed, flattened on one side, striated,with a broad, circular umbilicus or scar at the bottom, aroundwhich is an elevated, notched, and corrugated margin. Some

authors, who have mistaken the base of the capsule for itssummit, have compared the shape to that of a fig.

The seeds are rather larger than grains of paradise,roundish or somewhat angular, abrupt at the base, olive-

brown, with an aromatic flavour analogous to that of theMalabar cardamom, but totally devoid of the vehementlyhot acrid taste of the grains of paradise.

Ant.fi’ mum Chi'sir Smith 7 .tvnn-sppftpd. Avrtrtvnnm

>(| <l received from a druggist a capsule (fig.127), which agrees with one noticed,

Ip , u u* a • a «r vtaii^aj vvo wilij uuc uutiLCU,

o ted by Clusius (Exoticorum, pp. 37, 38.) Auother specimen is described by

Sir J. E. Smith (Rees' Cyclop, vol. xxiii. art. Mellegetta, andvol. xxxix. Addenda, art. Amomum.) This capsule must be con-founded neither with that of the Madagascar cardamom, norwith that of the grain of paradise. It is ovate, pointed,slightly triangular, cartilaginous, striated, smooth, yellowish[reddish, Smith) brown. The seeds distinguish it from allother species: they are oblong or ovate, inclining to cylin-drical, dark-brown, highly polished, as if varnished ; with apale yellowish-brown, corrugated, and notched margin sur-rounding the scar. They are very slightly aromatic.

,#, "W Clusii.