Spices - Cardamom

[mnjrutherford]

Beautiful Kate! What media are you using? It looks a lot like Prismacolor... but also water color?

[atash]

I haven't a clue what the plant looks like.

Each shoot has alternating strappy leaves lying vaguely in a single plain, sort of like many Irids (members of the Iris family) do, but even more so. There are many shoots in a clump, all coming up from a Ginger-like rhizome (well, fancy that, it's a member of the Ginger Family, Zingiberaceae).

I don't think there is a single member of that family that isn't at least somewhat attractive. Domesticated Ginger rarely blooms anymore, but the whole family is full of plants with very attractive foliage and orchid-like flowers. The flowers look so much like a those of an Orchid, they would fool many people, having the same general anatomy--6 tepals, resupinated (twisted upside-down), and the male and female parts fused into a single structure. However, unlike most Orchids, the flowers alas are almost always rather ephemeral, lasting at most about 1 week and more typically, a single day.

Almost the whole family is tropical, with just a few outliers in places like Japan (assuming that Zingiber myoga really is native to Japan...), although some species live at high elevations--even alpine elevations--in the Himalaya just north of the tropics. Because most of them are adapted to a winter dry season, they tend to go dormant even in the tropics, as a result of which, some of them are much more root-hardy that you would guess from there native climates. There are species from places like northern Thailand that thrive in the mid southern USA, and there are particularly hardy species in several genera that are hardier still, to maybe around USDA z7 or so.

I have a number of Hedychiums in my yard. Love 'em. Gorgeous things. Probably one of the gaudiest flowers you could grow here (Seattle).

Cardamom alas is one of the more deep-tropical types, from the south of India.

I'll have to check it out. But it needs a lot of heat you say? I'll start it inside then.

Ginger seeds respond well to warmth and humidity, even, oddly, the ones from extremely high elevations that retain a lot of vestigial tropical affinity. The rate at which they grow is incredible.

Typically, their seeds do not have long viability. But if you really want it, the plant is in commerce. Only trouble is, that it is often confused with one of it relations that rarely blooms and will NOT produce any Cardamom. I would check with a Ginger specialist to make sure.

[atash]

In coastal North Carolina, you could grow its cousin Zingiber myoga outdoors. It's quite similar to Chinese Ginger, but coldhardier and quite tough. It also blooms more readily.

[mnjrutherford]

whoa AWEsome info. Thanks! Well, I have been buying root ginger from the grocery store and stuffing it into the dirt. I didn't think about it till the end of fall and that came up and keeled over around January but I think it was more cause it got tired of being hauled in and out of the house. A second shoot has come up and has yet to "unfurl" it's leaves. I've got a bunch more that I'm gonna put out into the garden just to see what it will do over the summer. I think I'll put it down today in fact.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what comes up now!