Description
Green cardamom which is the Queen of spices is a dried fruit of a herbaceous perennial plant called Elettaria Cardamomum of the ginger family (Zingiberaceae). The plant can grow upto 1.5 to 4 meter tall. Cardamom plants normally start bearing two years after planting. The cardamom flower is green in colour with a white purple veined tip. The fruits would mature at 35 to 45 days intervals with 5 to 6 pickings. The fruit is known as a capsule and is harvested only when they ripen. The dried fruit is called as a cardamom pod.
Cardamom is considered to be one of the world’s oldest spice and is the third most expensive spice in the world after saffron and vanilla. Cardamom originally came from wild plants located in the Western Ghats in Southern India. The plants grew in such abundance in this region that this area became known as Cardamom Hills, which is located in Idukki district, of the Kerala state, in India.
