Cinnamon ( Cinnamomum verum , synonym C. zeylanicum ) is a small evergreen tree belonging to the family Lauraceae, native to Sri Lanka, or the spice obtained from the tree's bark. It is often confused with other similar species and the similar spices derived from them, such as Cassia and Cinnamomum burmannii, which are often called cinnamon too.
Nomenclature and taxonomy
The name cinnamon comes from Greek kinnámōmon , itself ultimately from Phoenician. The botanical name for the spice— Cinnamomum zeylanicum —is derived from Sri Lanka's former name, Ceylon.
In Marathi, it is known as "DalChini (दालचिनी)". In Bengali, it is called "Darchini" (দারুচিনি). In Telugu, it is called Dalchina Chakka , Chakka meaning bark or wood. In Sanskrit cinnamon is known as tvak or dārusitā . In Urdu, Hindi, and Hindustani cinnamon is called darchini (दालचीनी دارچینی), in Assamese it is called alseni , and in Gujarati taj . In Farsi (Persian), it is called darchin (دارچین), In Arabic (قرفة)
In Indonesia, where it is cultivated in Java and Sumatra, it is called kayu manis and sometimes cassia vera , the "real' cassia. In Sri Lanka, in the original Sinhala, cinnamon is known as kurundu, recorded in English in the 17th century as Korunda . In Malayalam, karugapatta and in Tamil pattai (பட்டை) or lavangampattai (இலவங்கபட்டை) or karuvappattai (கருவாப்பட்டை). In Arabic it is called qerfa (قرفة).
History
Cinnamon has been known from remote antiquity; the first mention of a particular spice in the Old Testament is of cinnamon (. 24) where Moses is commanded to use both sweet cinnamon (Hebrew קִנָּמוֹן, qinnāmôn) and cassia in the holy anointing oil; in Proverbs, where the lover's bed is perfumed with myrrh, aloe and cinnamon; and in Song of Solomon, a song describing the beauty of his beloved, cinnamon scents her garments like the smell of Lebanon . It was so highly prized among ancient nations that it was regarded as a gift fit for monarchs and even for a god: a fine inscription records the gift of cinnamon and cassia to the temple of Apollo at Miletus. Though its source was kept mysterious in the Mediterranean world for centuries by the middlemen who handled the spice trade, to protect their monopoly as suppliers, cinnamon is native to Sri Lanka. It was imported to Egypt as early as 2000 BC, but those who report that it had come from China confuse it with cassia. It is also alluded to by Herodotus and other classical writers. It was too expensive to be commonly used on funeral pyres in Rome, but the Emperor Nero is said to have burned a year's worth of the city's supply at the funeral for his wife Poppaea Sabina in 65 AD.
Before the foundation of Cairo, Alexandria was the Mediterranean shipping port of cinnamon. Europeans who knew the Latin writers who were quoting Herodotus knew that cinnamon came up the Red Sea to the trading ports of Egypt, but whether from Ethiopia or not was less than clear. When the sieur de Joinville accompanied his king to Egypt on Crusade in 1248, he reported what he had been told— and believed— that cinnamon was fished up in nets at the source of the Nile out at the edge of the world. Through the Middle Ages, the source of cinnamon was a mystery to the Western world. Marco Polo avoided precision on this score. In Herodotus and other authors, Arabia was the source of cinnamon: giant Cinnamon birds collected the cinnamon sticks from an unknown land where the cinnamon trees grew, and used them to construct their nests; the Arabs employed a trick to obtain the sticks. This story was current as late as 1310 in Byzantium, although in the first century, Pliny the Elder had written that the traders had made this up in order to charge more. The first mention of the spice growing in Sri Lanka was in Zakariya al-Qazwini's Athar al-bilad wa-akhbar al-‘ibad ("Monument of Places and History of God's Bondsmen") in about 1270. This was followed shortly thereafter by John of Montecorvino, in a letter of about 1292.
Indonesian rafts transported cinnamon (known in Indonesia as kayu manis - literally "sweet wood") on a "cinnamon route" directly from the Moluccas to East Africa, where local traders then carried it north to the Roman market. See also Rhapta.
Arab traders brought the spice via overland trade routes to Alexandria in Egypt, where it was bought by Venetian traders from Italy who held a monopoly on the spice trade in Europe. The disruption of this trade by the rise of other Mediterranean powers, such as the Mamluk Sultans and the Ottoman Empire, was one of many factors that led Europeans to search more widely for other routes to Asia.
Portuguese traders finally landed in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) at the beginning of the sixteenth century and restructured the traditional production and management of cinnamon by the Sinhalese, who later held the monopoly for cinnamon in Ceylon. The Portuguese established a fort on the island in 1518 and protected their own monopoly for over a hundred years.
Dutch traders finally dislodged the Portuguese by allying with the inland Kingdom of Kandy. They established a trading post in 1638, took control of the factories by 1640, and expelled all remaining Portuguese by 1658. "The shores of the island are full of it", a Dutch captain reported, "and it is the best in all the Orient: when one is downwind of the island, one can still smell cinnamon eight leagues out to sea." (Braudel 1984, p. 215)
The Dutch East India Company continued to overhaul the methods of harvesting in the wild, and eventually began to cultivate its own trees.
In 1767 Lord Brown of East India Company established Anjarakkandy Cinnamon Estate near Anjarakkandy in Cannanore (now Kannur) district of Kerala and this estate become Asia's largest cinnamon estate.
The British took control of the island from the Dutch in 1796. However, the importance of the monopoly of Ceylon was already declining, as cultivation of the cinnamon tree spread to other areas, the more common cassia bark became more acceptable to consumers, and coffee, tea, sugar, and chocolate began to outstrip the popularity of traditional spices.
The plant
Cinnamon' trees are 10–15 metres (32.8–49.2 feet) tall. The leaves are ovate-oblong in shape, 7–18 cm (2.75–7.1 inches) long. The flowers, which are arranged in panicles, have a greenish color, and have a distinct odor. The fruit is a purple 1-cm berry containing a single seed.
Cultivation
Cinnamon is harvested by growing the tree for two years and then coppicing it. The next year, about a dozen shoots will form from the roots. These shoots are then stripped of their bark, which is left to dry. Only the thin (0.5 mm) inner bark is used; the outer woody portion is removed, leaving metre-long cinnamon strips that curl into rolls ("quills") on drying; each dried quill comprises strips from numerous shoots packed together. These quills are then cut into 5–10 cm lengths for sale.
Cinnamon has been cultivated from time immemorial in Sri Lanka, and the tree is also grown commercially at Kerala in southern India, Bangladesh, Java, Sumatra, the West Indies, Brazil, Vietnam, Madagascar, Zanzibar, and Egypt. Sri Lanka cinnamon has a very thin, smooth bark with a light-yellowish brown color and a highly fragrant aroma.
According to the International Herald Tribune, in 2006 Sri Lanka produced 90% of the world's cinnamon, followed by China, India, and Vietnam. According to the FAO, Indonesia produces 40% of the world's Cassia genus of cinnamon.
The Sri Lankan grading system divides the cinnamon quills into four groups:
• Alba less than 6 mm in diameter
• Continental less than 16 mm in diameter
• Mexican less than 19 mm in diameter
• Hamburg less than 32 mm in diameter
These groups are further divided into specific grades, eg, Mexican is divided into M00 000 special, M000000 and M0000 depending on quill diameter and number of quills per kg.Any pieces of bark less than 106 mm long is categorized as quillings. Featherings are the inner bark of twigs and twisted shoots. Chips are trimmings of quills, outer and inner bark that cannot be separated or the bark of small twigs.
Associated species
There are several species of Cinnamon found in South and South-East Asia. In addition to the cultivated cinnamon type ( Cinnamomum zeylanicum or C. verum ), there reported to be seven other species of wild cinnamon which are endemic to Sri Lanka
- Cinnamomum tamala
- Cinnamomum dubium (Wight) (Sinhala: sewel Kurundu or wal Kurundu )
- Cinnamomum ovalifolium (Wight)
- Cinnamomum litseafolium Thw. (Sinhala: Kudu Ku
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