GRAINS OF PARADISE, the seeds of Amomum Mele gueta, a reed-like plant of the Zingiberaceae family, also called guinea grains and Melegueta pepper. It is a native of tropical western Africa, and of Prince's and St. Thomas's islands in the Gulf of Guinea, and cultivated in other tropical countries. The seeds are contained in the arid pulp of the fruit and have a glossy dark-brown husk, with a conical light-coloured membranous car uncle at the base and a white kernel. They contain a neutral essential oil, having an aromatic, not acrid taste and an intensely pungent, viscid, brown resin.
Grains of paradise were formerly officinal in British phar macopoeias, and in the 13th and succeeding centuries were used as a drug and a spice, the wine known as hippocras being flavoured with them and with ginger and cinnamon. They are now exported almost exclusively from the Gold Coast.