Elettaria cardamomum (L.) Maton | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science

Native to:

India

Introduced into:

Bangladesh, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Lesser Sunda Is., Réunion, Thailand, Trinidad-Tobago, Vietnam

Homotypic Synonyms

• Alpinia cardamomum (L.) Roxb. in Asiat. Res. 11: 355 (1810)
• Amomum cardamomum L. in Sp. Pl.: 1 (1753)
• Amomum racemosum Lam. in Tabl. Encycl. 1: t. 2 (1791), nom. superfl.
• Amomum repens Sonn. in Voy. Indes Orient. 3: 272 (1782), nom. superfl.
• Cardamomum officinale Salisb. in Trans. Hort. Soc. London 1: 282 (1812)
• Cardamomum verum Oken in Allg. Naturgesch. 3(1): 508 (1841), nom. superfl.
• Elettaria cardamomum var. minor Watt in Commerc. Prod. India: 512 (1908), not validly publ.
• Elettaria repens Baill. in Traité Bot. Méd. Phan. 2: 1432 (1884), nom. superfl.
• Matonia cardamomum (L.) Stephenson & J.M.Churchill in Med. Bot. 3: t. 106 (1831)
• Zingiber cardamomum (L.) Stokes in Bot. Mat. Med. 1: 69 (1812)

Heterotypic Synonyms

• Amomum ensal Raeusch. in Nomencl. Bot. Pl. Illustr., ed. 3: 1 (1797)
• Amomum uncinatum Stokes in Bot. Comm.: 161 (1830)
• Cardamomum elletari Garsault in Fig. Pl. Méd.: t. 55b (1764), opus utique oppr.
• Cardamomum malabaricum Pritz. in Icon. Bot. Index: 207 (1854)
• Cardamomum minus (Gaertn.) Kuntze in Revis. Gen. Pl. 2: 685 (1891), nom. illeg.
• Elettaria cardamomum var. minuscula Burkill in Bull. Misc. Inform. Kew 1930: 35 (1930), nom. nud.
• Zingiber minus Gaertn. in Fruct. Sem. Pl. 1: 35 (1788)

POWO follows these authorities in accepting this name:

• Baksh-Comeau, Y., Maharaj, S.S., Adams, C.D., Harris, S.A., Filer, D.L. & Hawthorne, W.D. (2016). An annotated checklist of the vascular plants of Trinidad and Tobago with analysis of vegetation types and botanical 'hotspots'. Phytotaxa 250: 1-431.
• Dy Phon, P. (2000). Dictionnaire des plantes utilisées au Cambodge: 1-915. Chez l'auteur, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
• Girmansyah, D. & al. (eds.) (2013). Flora of Bali an annotated checklist: 1-158. Herbarium Bogorensis, Indonesia.
• Govaerts, R. (2001). World Checklist of Seed Plants Database in ACCESS E-F: 1-50919.
• Larsen, K. (1996). A prelimanary checklist of the Zingiberaceae of Thailand. Thai Forest Bulletin (Botany) 24: 35-49.
• Nelson Sutherland, C.H. (2008). Catálogo de las plantes vasculares de Honduras. Espermatofitas: 1-1576. SERNA/Guaymuras, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
• Nguyen, Q.B. (2017). Thực Vật Chí Việt Nam. Flora of Vietnam 21: 1-489. Nhà xuất bản khoa học và kỹ thuật, Hà Nội.
• Pasha, M.K. & Uddin, S.B. (2013). Dictionary of plant names of Bangladesh, Vasc. Pl.: 1-434. Janokalyan Prokashani, Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Catálogo de Plantas y Líquenes de Colombia

• Bernal, R., Gradstein, S.R. & Celis, M. (eds.). 2015. Catálogo de plantas y líquenes de Colombia. Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. http://catalogoplantasdecolombia.unal.edu.co

Kew Species Profiles

• Kiple, K. F. (2000). The Cambridge World History of Food. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Mabberley, D. J. (2008). Mabberley’s Plant-book: a Portable Dictionary of Plants, their Classification and Uses, Third Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Parthasarathy, V. A. (2008). Spices: Volume 1 - Major Spices. Today & Tomorrow's Publishers, New Delhi.
• Ravindran, P. N. (2002). Cardamom: the genus Elettaria. Taylor & Francis, London.

Kew Backbone Distributions

• Baksh-Comeau, Y., Maharaj, S.S., Adams, C.D., Harris, S.A., Filer, D.L. & Hawthorne, W.D. (2016). An annotated checklist of the vascular plants of Trinidad and Tobago with analysis of vegetation types and botanical 'hotspots'. Phytotaxa 250: 1-431.
• Dy Phon, P. (2000). Dictionnaire des plantes utilisées au Cambodge: 1-915. Chez l'auteur, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
• Girmansyah, D. & al. (eds.) (2013). Flora of Bali an annotated checklist: 1-158. Herbarium Bogorensis, Indonesia.
• Larsen, K. (1996). A prelimanary checklist of the Zingiberaceae of Thailand. Thai Forest Bulletin (Botany) 24: 35-49.
• Nguyen, Q.B. (2017). Thực Vật Chí Việt Nam. Flora of Vietnam 21: 1-489. Nhà xuất bản khoa học và kỹ thuật, Hà Nội.
• Pasha, M.K. & Uddin, S.B. (2013). Dictionary of plant names of Bangladesh, Vasc. Pl.: 1-434. Janokalyan Prokashani, Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia

• Bernal, R., Gradstein, S.R., & Celis, M. (eds.). (2020). Catálogo de Plantas y Líquenes de Colombia. v1.1. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Dataset/Checklist. https://doi.org/10.15472/7avdhn
• Burkill HM. (1995). The useful plants of west tropical Africa, Vols. 1-3. The useful plants of west tropical Africa, Vols 1-3.
• Cámara-Leret, R., & Dennehy, Z. (2019). Information gaps in indigenous and local knowledge for science-policy assessments. Nature Sustainability 2:736-741.
• Dempewolf, H., Eastwood, R. J., Guarino, L., Khoury, C. K., Müller, J. V. & Toll, J. (2014). Adapting agriculture to climate change: a global initiative to collect, conserve, and use crop wild relatives. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 38, 369-377.
• Diazgranados et al. (2021). Catalogue of plants of Colombia. Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia project. In prep.
• Diazgranados, M., Allkin, B., Black N., Cámara-Leret, R., Canteiro C., Carretero J., Eastwood R., Hargreaves S., Hudson A., Milliken W., Nesbitt, M., Ondo, I., Patmore, K., Pironon, S., Turner, R., Ulian, T. (2020). World Checklist of Useful Plant Species. Produced by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity.
• FPI (2021). Food Plants International. https://fms.cmsvr.com/fmi/webd/Food_Plants_World?homeurl=https://foodplantsinternational.com/plants/
• GBIF.org (2021). GBIF species matching tool. https://www.gbif.org/tools/species-lookup
• Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humbodlt (2014). Plantas alimenticias y medicinales nativas de Colombia. 2567 registros, aportados por: Castellanos, C. (Contacto del recurso), Valderrama, N. (Creador del recurso, Autor), Bernal, Y. (Autor), García, N. (Autor). http://i2d.humboldt.org.co/ceiba/resource.do?r=ls_colombia_magnoliophyta_2014
• Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt. (2014). Plantas alimenticias y medicinales nativas de Colombia. 2567 registros, aportados por: Castellanos, C. (Contacto del recurso), Valderrama, N. (Creador del recurso, Autor), Bernal, Y. (Autor), García, N. (Autor). http://i2d.humboldt.org.co/ceiba/resource.do?r=ls_colombia_magnoliophyta_2014
• Jansen, P., Lemmens, R., Oyen, L., Siemonsma, J., Stavast, F. & Van Valkenburg, J. (1991) Plant Resources of South-East Asia. Basic list of species and commodity grouping. Final version. Pudoc, Wageningen.
• Medicinal Plant Names Services (MPNS) v.10 (2021); http://mpns.kew.org/
• PROTA (2021). Plants Resources of Tropical Africa. https://prota4u.org/database/
• RBG, Kew (2021). Kew Economic Botany Collection. https://ecbot.science.kew.org/
• Willis, K.J. (ed.) (2017). State of the World’s Plants 2017. Report. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Other Kew resources that provide information on this taxon:

IPNI - The International Plant Names Index

View this species in the Tree of Life Explorer

• • Angiosperm Threat Predictions
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• • 'The Herbarium Catalogue, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Published on the Internet http://www.kew.org/herbcat [accessed on Day Month Year]'. Please enter the date on which you consulted the system.
  • Digital Image © Board of Trustees, RBG Kew http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
• • The International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants 2025. Published on the Internet at http://www.ipni.org and https://powo.science.kew.org/
  • © Copyright 2023 World Checklist of Vascular Plants. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
• • Common Names from Plants and People Africa http://www.plantsandpeopleafrica.com/
• • The International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants 2025. Published on the Internet at http://www.ipni.org and https://powo.science.kew.org/
  • © Copyright 2023 International Plant Names Index and World Checklist of Vascular Plants. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
• • Copyright applied to individual images
• • Kew Species Profiles
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• • ColPlantA database
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• • http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0