Flora Medica

Guinea, near Sierra Leone.ZINGIBERACE2E.(Melligetta or Malaeueta Pepper.Offic.)Rhizoina perennial, woody, creeping horizontally. Stems erect,simple, slender, 3 feet high, leafy, but destitute of flowers. Leavesnumerous, crowded, 2-ranked, alternate, a span long and an inch broad,lanceolate, or slightly ovate, with a long taper point, entire, smooth,single-ribbed, striated with innumerable oblique veins. Their flavouris slightly aromatic, after having been dried twenty years. Flowerstalksradical, solitary, an inch or two in length, ascending, clothed withnumerous, close, sheathing bracteas, all abrupt, ribbed, somewhat hairyand fringed; the lower ones very short; the upper gradually muchlonger. Of the parts of the flower nothing can be made out from ourspecimens. Capsule 1^ inch long, | an inch in diameter, oblong,bluntly triangular, scarcely ovate, beaked, of a dark reddish-brown,ribbed, coriaceous, rough with minute deciduous bristly hairs. Whenbroken it is very powerfully aromatic, even after being kept twentyyears, with a peculiar pepper-like flavour, rather too strong to be agreeable.Seeds numerous, enveloped in membranes formed of the driedpulp, roundish or somewhat angular, of a shining golden brown,minutely rough or granulated, extremely aromatic, hot and acrid. Smith.Properties of the seeds the same as those of other Amoma ; theyare powerfully aromatic, stimulant and cordial.1198. A. grandiflorum Smith Exot. Bot. 2. t. 111. ReesCyclop, suppl. No. 6. Sierra Leone.Ligula cloven, smooth. Spikes capitate. Bracts elliptical, shorterthan the fruit; lower ones distant. Intermediate lobe of filamententire. Capsule oblong, bluntly triangular, minutely hispid. Seedsovate. Seeds differ from those of A. grana paradisi in being grey orlead-coloured, much less polished, with a totally different flavour,resembling that of camphor, which they equal in warmth and pungency.As a stimulant or cordial, these seeds appear equal to any Cardamomswhatever. Smith.ELETTARIA.The character the same as that of Amomum but the tube ofthe corolla filiform and the anther naked. Blume.1199. E. Cardamomurn Maton in act. linn. x. 254. Blumeenum. i. 51. N. and E. handb. i. 250. pi. med. t. 66. Amomumrepens Sonnerat it. ii. 24-0. t. 136. Amomum CardamomumWhite in act. linn. x. 230. t. 4. 5. Alpinia repens Smithin act. linn. viii. 353. Alpinia Cardamomum Pose, monandr.pl. 38.Roxb. fl.ind. i. 70. (Rheede mal. xi. t. 4 and 5.) Mountainousparts of the coast of Malabar. (True Cardamom.)Rhizoma with numerous fleshyfibres. Stems perennial, erect,smooth, jointed, enveloped in the spongy sheaths of the leaves ;from6 to 9 feet high. Leaves bifarious, subsessile on their sheaths, lanceolate,fine-pointed, somewhat villous above, sericeous underneath, entire,from 1 to 2 feet long. Sheaths slightly villous, with a rounded ligularising above the mouth. Scapes several (3 or 4) from the base of thestems, prostrate, flexuose, jointed, branched, from 1 to 2 feet long.Branches or racemes alternate, one from each joint of the scape, sub-566