Cardamon Not Flowering
Answered by: Conrad Richter
Question from: Joanne Bransford
Posted on: January 16, 2001

I love your printed catalogue and your website. You have more herbs available than anyone else. Your catalogue is very educational.

Here in south Texas we don’t see Herb Farms on the same scale as yours.

My question is how do you get Cardamon to bloom and then seed? My plant is getting huge and still in a pot. It is about three years old.

There is some confusion in the North American herb industry about cardamom. It appears that at least one non-flowering type has been sold for many years as potted herbs by many herb growers, particularly in the United States. Richters, too, sold this variety as cardamom until 1998. It turns out that there are several species that are used for the cardamom spice. The imposter appears to be a type of ginger which is very closely related to cardamom. Nobody bothered to check its identity, probably because it doesn’t flower (flowers are needed for positive botanical identification), so it continues to be sold incorrectly labelled as cardamom.

Since we discovered the problem, we have been growing only true cardamom grown from our seeds. These seeds are from spice plantations in South America, so we are completely confident that we have the right variety now.

To get cardamom to flower requires having the right variety, obviously, and then requires having warm moist conditions.

Back to Growing Herbs | Q & A Index

Copyright © 1997-2024 Otto Richter and Sons Limited. All rights reserved.