Description
Brown cardamom is the dried fruit of a perennial herbaceous plant, called Amomum Subulatum in the Zingiberaceae family. It is three times the size of green cardamom.
It is cultivated in the Sub-Himalayan region of North Eastern India, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. It is grown in cold humid conditions under the shade of trees at an altitude between 800 – 2000 meters above sea level, with an average precipitation or rainfall of 3000 – 3500 mm spread over about 200 days and with a temperature ranging from 6 – 30° C. The plant grows around 1.5 meter in height. The largest producer of the black cardamom is Nepal, followed by India and Bhutan. Another variety of brown cardamom is from the plant, amomum tsao-ko, grown at high altitudes in Yunnan, as well as the northern highlands of Vietnam.
