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Cinnamon

I was sitting at the table the other night drinking a mug of hot apple cider with a cinnamon stick and wondering where cinnamon came from. Actually, cinnamon is nothing like I envisioned.

Actually, cinnamon is the inside bark of the tropical evergreen laurel tree native to Sri Lanka (formerly known as Ceylon.) At the right is the small stem of the plant. 
Sri Lanka's most important export is cinnamon. In fact, so strong is the affinity between cinnamon and Sri Lanka that the very botanical name of the spice - Cinnamomum zeylanicum is derived from the island's former name, Ceylon. Sri Lanka is the world's leading source of cinnamon, producing not only four-fifths of the world output but its choicest grades as well. The spice is derived from the sweetly scented inner bark of the cinnamon tree, whose habitats are verdant tropical locations such as Indonesia, the Malabar coast of India, the Seychelles, the West Indies and, more recently, tropical South America. Its use as a spice is of great antiquity and was known in ancient Egypt and is mentioned in the Old Testament.

 
The bark is harvested twice a year, starting when the trees are about three years old, one year after pruning. Cinnamon is always harvested immediately after each of the two rainy seasons, when the rain-soaked bark can be more easily stripped from the trees.
Cinnamon peeling is a highly skilled technique, handed down almost unchanged from ancient times. In Sri Lanka it is still the exclusive occupation of the Salagama caste - a socio-occupational group which follows a trade prescribed by tradition, and quite separate from the growers.
In the first stage of the harvest, the "flush" of tender shoots is cut down and, covered in sacking in the peeling shed, left to ferment lightly.

The most difficult part of cinnamon production starts the next day. Seated on the floor of the peeling shed, the peelers snip off the leaves and twigs, and scrape off the rough outer bark from the twigs. The inner bark is then rubbed and beaten down thoroughly with a smooth brass block to break up and homogenize the tissues and free the bark from the twigs. Then the peeler, using the distinctive tool of his trade, a small curved knife called a kokaththa, deftly marks two parallel slits on the stick and eases the bark free in one piece. Experienced peelers do this swiftly and with the precision of a surgeon, making clean and true cuts - all without fragmenting the bark.

Next, the barks are carefully packed in layers, one inside the other, in several plys, telescoped and overlapped end to end to produce long, rolled and layered "quills."

The bark rolls are covered in jute sacking again and left to cure lightly for a day, after which they are air-dried indoors on hammocks for two days. When dried, the bark is curled round into golden-brown quills, which are again dried outdoors in filtered sunlight for one or two days. By this time the cinnamon is dried to a crackling, papery texture and possesses the true cinnamon color. The bark is then trimmed precisely to the 42-inch quills specified by the world cinnamon market.

Growers journey to the fair with their cinnamon, all processed and baled to the precise requirements of the London and Amsterdam transshipment trade. Each grower's peelers also attend the fair, and according to an age-old practice, their proceeds are divided equally between them. This is a highly effective quality control: the peelers maintain high standards in processing the bark since their share depends as much on the caliber of their work as on the natural quality of the cinnamon.