Note 506 — BOOK XII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF TREES.

It is by no means settled among naturalists, what plant the Amomum of the ancients was; indeed, there has been the greatest divergence of opinion. Tragus takes it to be a kind of bindweed: Matthioli, the Piper Æthiopicum of Linnæus: Cordus and Scaliger, the rose of Jericho, the Anastatica hierocuntica of Linnæus. Gesner thinks it to have been the garden pepper, the Solanum bacciferum of Tournefort: Cæsalpinus the cubeb, the Piper cubeba of Linnæus: Plukenet and Sprengel the Cissus vitiginea, while Fée and Paulet look upon it as not improbably identical with the Amomum racemosum of Linnæus. The name is probably derived from the Arabic hahmâma, the Arabians having first introduced it to the notice of the Greeks.