Green cardamom

Elettaria cardamomum

Zingiberaceae

The queen of spices — a tropical ginger whose green pods scent chai, coffee, and after-meal folklore.

Culinary spice. The kitchen dose is a pod or two, not an essential-oil shot.

Parts used: Ripe seed (inside the green pod)
Traditional notes: Chai and coffee · After a heavy meal · Fresh breath · Traditional digestive spice
Grow · USDA 6b: Tropical understory, USDA 10–12; a warm humid greenhouse elsewhere A nursery rhizome. Seed is slow and often sterile grocery-spice. In work: Jan · Feb · Mar · Apr · May · Jun · Jul · Aug · Sep · Oct · Nov · Dec
Harvest: Pods when just green-ripe. Most cooks buy them dried.

Grocery pods will not grow. Buy a named Elettaria plant if you insist.
It wants a bathroom window’s humidity, not a desert sill.
Keep pods whole until you crush them — the oil leaves fast.

Safety

Essential oil internally Gallstones in very large spice amounts without advice

Lore

The queen of spices in the Western Ghats. Vikings somehow got it into Scandinavian buns, a trade-route joke that stuck. Crack a green pod and the kitchen smells like a train through Kerala.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.