The first writer who definitely and correctly states the country of the cardamom appears to be the Portuguese navigator Barbosa[2390] (1514), who frequently names it as a production of the Malabar coast. Garcia de Orta[2391] mentions the shipment of the drug to Europe; he also ascertained that the larger sort was produced in Ceylon. The Malabar cardamon plant was figured by Rheede under its indigenous name of Elettari.[2392]
The essential oil of cardamoms was distilled before 1544 by Valerius Cordus ([see p. 526, note 1]).
Cultivation and Production—Although the cardamom plant grows wild in the forests of Southern India, where it is commonly called Ilāchi, its fruits are largely obtained from cultivated plants. The methods of cultivation, which vary in the different districts, may be thus described:—
1. Previous to the commencement of the rains the cultivators ascend the mountain sides, and seek in the shady evergreen forests a spot where some cardamom plants are growing. Here they make small clearings, in which the admission of light occasions the plant to develope in abundance. The cardamom plants attain 2 to 3 feet in height during the following monsoon, after which the ground is again cleared of weeds, protected with a fence, and left to itself for a year. About two years after the first clearing the plants begin to flower, and five months later ripen some fruits, but a full crop is not got till at least a year after. The plants continue productive six or seven years. A garden, 484 square yards in area, four of which may be made in an acre of forest, will give on an average an annual crop of 12½ lbs. of garbled cardamoms.[2393] Ludlow, an Assistant Conservator of Forests, reckons that not more than 28 lbs. can be got from an acre of forest. From what he says, it further appears that the plants which come up on clearings of the Coorg forests are mainly seedlings, which make their appearance in the same quasi-spontaneous manner as certain plants in the clearings of a wood in Europe. He says they commence to bear in about 3½ years after their first appearance.[2394] The plan of cultivation above described is that pursued in the forests of Travancore, Coorg and Wynaad.
2. On the lower range of the Pulney Hills, near Dindigul, at an elevation of about 5,000 feet above the sea, the cardamom plant is cultivated in the shade. The natives burn down the underwood, and clear away the small trees of the dense moist forests called sholas, which are damp all the year round. The cardamoms are then sown, and when a few inches high are planted out, either singly or in twos, under the shade of the large trees. They take five years before they bear fruit: “in October,” remarks our informant,[2395] “I saw the plants in full flower and also in fruit,—the latter not however ripe.”
3. In North Canara and Western Mysore the cardamom is cultivated in the betel-nut plantations. The plants, which are raised from seed, are planted between the palms, from which and from plantains they derive a certain amount of shade. They are said to produce fruit in their third year.
Cardamoms begin to ripen in October, and the gathering continues during dry weather for two or three months. All the fruits on a scape do not become ripe at the same time, yet too generally the whole scape is gathered at once and dried,—to the manifest detriment of the drug. This is done partly to save the fruit from being eaten by snakes, frogs and squirrels, and partly to avoid the capsules splitting, which they do when quite mature. In some plantations however the cardamoms are gathered in a more reasonable fashion. As they are collected the fruits are carried to the houses, laid out for a few days on mats, then stripped from their scapes, and the drying completed by a gentle fire-heat. In Coorg the fruit is stripped from the scape before drying, and the drying is sometimes effected wholly by sun-heat.
In the native states of Cochin and Travancore cardamoms are a monopoly of the respective governments. The rajah of the latter state requires that all the produce shall be sold to his officials, who forward it to the main depôt at Alapalli or Aleppi, a port in Travancore, where his commercial agent resides. The rajah is tenacious of his rights, and inserts a clause in the leases he grants to European coffee-planters, of whom a great many have settled in his territory, requiring that cardamoms shall not be grown.
The cardamoms at Aleppi are sold by auction, and bought chiefly by Moplah merchants for transport to different parts of India, and also, through third parties, to England. All the lower qualities are consumed in India, and the finer alone shipped to Europe.
In the forests belonging to the British Government cardamoms are mostly reckoned among the miscellaneous items of produce; but in Coorg, the cardamom forests are now let at a rental of £3,000 per annum under a lease which will expire in 1878.[2396]