I first saw this flower in the herbal garden at Mirpur Botanical Garden. Shamim, Mehran, Zaman and I were wandering about when it caught my eye. It was well inside the outer wall of the garden, so I asked Shamim to take a photo of it, because even from that distance it looked medicinal to me. I did not get a proper look at it that day.
A few days later, walking past Mokarram Bhaban, I noticed the same flowers inside the pharmacy garden. Once again they were too far in for me to see the plant properly, but I made a plan to come back some day and have a good look.
The plant I had taken for bamboo
For quite a while I did not meet those dazzling flowers again. When I finally did, it was in a place that genuinely surprised me: the medicinal garden of our own department. The plants I had been passing for ages, thinking they were some bamboo bonsai or some other kind of bamboo, were carrying this very flower. I stood there a long time trying to work out whether this was a separate plant or really their flower.
At last I could see it up close. It is a herb with a single stem rising from under the ground, no branches at all, and the leaves wrap around the stem, each overlapping the one below. The leaves are a slightly dark green and lanceolate in shape. At the tip of the stem hangs a long cluster of flowers, white with a touch of red. They are lovely, with a single petal-like labellum and an anther dangling in front of it. The inflorescence is a raceme. I took my photos, confident that since I had found it on campus, the name would not take much effort.
The name I found, and the name that was right
It did not take long, but the answer surprised me. The first name I came across was choto elach, the small cardamom. The flower of the cardamom we put in our cooking, growing right there in the department. That is exactly why I keep thinking everyone should keep a small garden. From it you would get vegetables, fruit, all kinds of spices, and along with them peace of mind, beauty and a quiet satisfaction.
Then I dug a little deeper and the picture changed. The name was close, but this is not the cardamom of our kitchens. This plant is Alpinia calcarata, and the small cardamom we cook with comes from Elettaria cardamomum. Both belong to the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, so they are close relatives, but not the same plant. Because the flower looks rather like a snapdragon, it is called snap ginger. It is native to India, which gives it another name, Indian ginger. Why some people call it cardamom ginger is a story for another day.
Like ginger, it grows from a rhizome under the soil. It is a perennial herb that lives for several years, and its rhizome can be used much like ginger. It has 48 chromosomes, if you like that sort of detail. Had it been in my own garden I would have dug up the rhizome to look at it and photograph it. But it is not mine, and if someone caught me digging in the department garden that would be the end of me. So I have still not seen that rhizome with my own eyes, and I do not know whether I ever will.
What the rhizome holds
The rhizome, the flowers and the roots carry a number of volatile oils, the main ones being 1,8-cineole, camphene, pinene, camphor, borneol and methyl cinnamate. Studies have also reported compounds such as quercetin and vanillic acid, along with some terpenes.
Most of the plant’s traditional use centres on the rhizome. It is traditionally used for sore throat, a broken voice, cough, asthma, rheumatic pain, fever and digestive upsets. In India, though not here, the young shoots are also cooked and eaten.
One thing I have decided, though. From now on, when a cardamom pod gets crushed under my teeth in the middle of a meal, I will not glare at it. I will think of its beautiful cousin in the department garden and set it aside with due respect.
The traditional uses described here are for information only. Consult a doctor before using any plant to treat an illness.
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