"A.Malhotra" wrote in
:
Victoria Clare wrote:

And can you actually grow cardamoms from, well, cardamoms from a
spice pot, or do you need special seed as per the catalogue? I am a
big cardamom fan, so if the leaves smell like the seeds, I shall soon
be acquiring a new house plant one way or the other. . .


I've no experience of trying to grow cardamom but I think that most of
the culinary stock would be rather too old to do well. Re growing it
as a houseplant, its quite a big plant, related to ginger.

But the plant itself is not
especially beautiful and I don't think any other part of the plant
carries the aroma. Anita

Very interesting - spurred on by this, I did some web research, and found
to my surprise that there are several plants referred to as 'cardamom' -
Elettaria cardamomum Maton seems likely to be the one you saw.

I did find some postings on various bulletin boards from people who were
mostly looking for advice themselves - but a number of them mentioned
scented leaves - maybe more noticeable when plant is inside in a pot?

I also found a few pics:
http://www.desert-
tropicals.com/Plants/Zingiberaceae/Elettaria_cardamomum.html and
http://plantsdatabase.com/go/862/

and it does indeed look very much like ginger. Been there, and it was a
bit dull, so I may not bother again.

According to http://www.sunderland.com/vi/mowgard.htm they were planning to
grow them in the Winter Gardens in Sunderland. Anyone been and know if
they do?

Victoria Clare