A herbaceous ginger-family plant with reed-like stems, grown for its pungent, peppery seeds.
Grains of paradise or alligator pepper (Aframomum melegueta, family Zingiberaceae) is a perennial herb of the ginger family, with tufts of leafy stems 1 to 4 metres tall growing from a creeping rhizome. It has been grown as a spice and medicine for more than two thousand years and was known in ancient Rome. It is often cultivated in West Africa and in India, and through the slave trade it reached the Guianas in South America, where it is also grown.
It is native to western and central tropical Africa, where it grows in shady places on damp soil in forests. It grows best at 21 to 28°C, never much below 15°C, with 1,500 to 1,900 mm of rain a year, in partial shade on well-drained, slightly acid soil. It is propagated from seed or by dividing the rhizomes as new growth begins.
Source: Useful Tropical Plants database (Fern, K.).
Seeds are used across West Africa in folk remedies for hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, and inflammation.
Seeds are used as a pungent spice in West African cooking, often as a pepper substitute.
The seeds, widely called alligator pepper in West Africa, are used in ceremonies such as naming ceremonies, marriages, and title-taking events, and are offered to ancestors alongside kola nut.
A shade-tolerant herb of humid forest, propagated by rhizome division; the seed pods are harvested and dried.