Green cardamom

Value to bees

Nectar

High

Pollen

Moderate

As a honey crop

Minor honey crop — a surplus only locally or occasionally

Which bees, and why

The lipped flower is built for a large bee to land on and push into, and the Asian honey bee is the principal pollinator across the Indian growing regions. Carpenter bees are effective but visit less consistently.

Worth knowing

A modest flow with an outsized agricultural significance: cardamom yield rises substantially where honey bee colonies are present, and estates stock hives for that reason.

Flowering

In flower

April to July (northern hemisphere)

Flowering runs through the early monsoon in the Western Ghats, which makes foraging weather the limiting factor rather than flower availability.

When nectar flows

Rich and easily accessible, and the crop is dense enough under cultivation to give a small but real surplus.

What it does to the honey

Carries a genuine spice aromatic — eucalyptol and terpinyl acetate from the same oil the seed is grown for — over a light amber body.

Growing it

Conditions

Deep shade, constant humidity and warmth, on rich moist soil. It is an understorey plant and scorches in full sun.

Size

2-4 m tall shoots, with flowering stems at ground level.

Native range

The evergreen forests of the Western Ghats in southern India. Cultivated there, in Sri Lanka, and at large scale in Guatemala.

Suits

Containers and window boxes

• Growable as a foliage plant in a warm humid conservatory and very unlikely to flower there.
• The flowering stems run along the ground and are easily damaged by cultivation between rows.

What it looks like

Tall reed-like leafy shoots to three metres rising from a rhizome, with the flowers carried on separate low sprawling panicles running along the ground — small, white, with a violet-veined lip.