[Sca-cooks] Re: Sca-cooks Digest, Spices - Cardamon

[UrthMomma at aol.com]

Cardamon is native to southern India, growing as an understory plant in 
tropical forests. It requires shade, and experiences leaf burn in direct sun. 

I have a 14 inch pot of cardamon in my living room that I am overwintering as 
a houseplant . It's doing fairly well. In the past 3 or 4 years I have 
attempted to overwinter cardamon in a cool greenhouse along with a fig, a tea bush, 
lemon verbena and rosemary. It died everytime. Cardamon is truly a tropical 
plant and really doesn't like it below 40 deg F.  Cardamon will probably not 
produce flowers and seed pods in my climate ( zone 5 USDA - Indiana) , but the 
leaves smell wonderful, although I do not know of a culinary use for them. In 
summer the pot lives under a large spruce tree, limbed up about 6 foot up the 
trunk, in a quite shady, eg grass won't grow there, situation. Cardamon is a 
lush for water, but it also likes well drained soil. It also makes a nice potted 
plant for a shady porch or deck and has a lovely fragrance when ever someone 
brushes against the leaves. 

It is possible that cardamon plants could have been grown in southern Europe 
and the Middle East, but they are native to humid tropical forests, so 
actually getting a seed crop is  problematic in that climate. Not utterly impossible, 
but only a dedicated herbalist/gardener with a fair amount of luck and hard 
work could do so. Commercially -fugetaboutit.

the other Olwen
Olwen Buklond
Barony of Sternfeld, Middle

In a message dated 2/23/2004 5:35:19 PM US Eastern Standard Time, 
sca-cooks-request at ansteorra.org writes:

> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Spices was licorice,
> >
> >
> >Hmm. Makes sense.
> >
> >Also makes me realize I don't really know off hand which spices can be
> >grown in Europe...  and, for that matter, where in Europe. Its climate
> >has a pretty wide variation. I know that peppers and cloves were Asian...
> >
> >What about cardamom?
> >
> >AEllin
>