Plant · P-638

Grains Of Paradise

Aframomum melegueta

Grains of paradise is a West African forest ginger whose reddish-brown seeds have been traded as a pepper substitute for more than two thousand years - the flavour is warm and peppery with notes of jasmine, hazelnut, butter and citrus, and it still turns up in beer, ale, gin and the Moroccan blend ras el hanout. The fruit pulp is eaten raw or chewed as a stimulant, and the root and seed carry a long medicinal record for digestion, cramping and childbirth. It is a true rainforest understorey plant: it wants partial shade, damp well-drained ground and 1500 mm or more of rain a year, and it will not take cold - growth stalls below about 15 C and it can only be grown outdoors where the climate is hot and humid year round. Elsewhere it is a protected-house or container plant. It builds slowly outward from a rhizome into a tufted clump.