CINNAMON Cinnam. Cinnamomum Saigonicum, U. S. P. IX.
Cinnamon is the dried bark of Cinnamomum Loureirii Nees. Fam. Lauracea.
Cinnamon yields not less than 2 per cent. of volatile ether soluble extractive, U.S. Cinnamon Bark is the dried inner bark of shoots from the truncated stocks of Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Breyn. Obtained from  cultivated trees. Imported from Ceylon and distinguished in commerce as Ceylon cinnamon. Br. Cinnemomi Cortex. Br. Cinnamon Bark Cortex Cinnamomi. Cannelle Fr. Zimmt. G. Cannella. It Canela.Sp Kurundu.Cingalese Karua Puttay. Tamil  

Both Cinnamomum and cassia were terms employed by the ancients, but whether  exactly as now understood it is impossible to determine. From what source the  ancients derived their cinnamon and cassia is not certainly known. Neither the plants nor their localities, as described by Dioscorides, Pliny, and  Theophrastus, correspond precisely with our present knowledge; but in this respect much allowance must be made for the inaccurate geography of the  ancients. It is probable that the Arabian navigators at a very early period  conveyed this spice within the limits of the Phoenician and Grecian and subsequently of the Roman commerce. The three principal varieties of cinnamon are known as Saigon Cinnamon, Ceylon Cinnamon and Cassia Cinnamon. Of these the U. S. P. has favored various ones in its previous editions. At present the U.S.P. recognizes only the Saigon variety and the Br. Ph. only  the Ceylon. The genus Cinnamomum is a group of evergreen trees with mostly three-nerved  leaves. The flowers which are either perfect or polygamous are of a pale yellow color and borne in panicles. Cinnamomum loureirii (Nees) the botanical source of Saigon Cinnamon, is of medium height, native to China and Japan. Its branches are glabrous and bear opposite and alternate, rigid, entire, elliptic to oblong,  attenuate-acuminate leaves having acoriaceous texture. The petioles of these are  one-half inch or less in length, the blades three to five inches long. The flowers are very small and they were in the dried state, formerly an article of commerce under the name of Flores Cassiae. The fruit is a berry which adheres to the receptacle.

The Saigon cinnamon is collected chiefly from wild trees especially in the mountainous districts of Annam, in French Indo China. .The greater portion of  it is from branches and small stems and of good quality, although sometimes chips of the thick trunk bark are mixed with the quills. This variety is called  Saigon because it is exported from the city of that name in the southern part of Cochin-China.

Cinnamomum zeylandicum (Nees) is a native of Ceylon and the neighboring  Malabar coast In the wild state it is a tree about 20 or 30 feet high, covered  with a thick, scabrous bark. The branches are numerous, strong, horizontal, and  declining, and the young shoots are beautifully speckled with dark green and  light orange colors. The leaves are 4 to 7 inches long, petiolate,  opposite for the most part, coriaceous, entire, ovate or ovate-oblong, obtusely  pointed and three-nerved, with the lateral nerves vanishing as they approach the  point. There are also two less obvious nerves, one on each side arising from the base, proceeding towards the border of the leaf and then quickly vanishing. In  one variety the leaves are very broad and some what cordate. When mature, they are of a shining green upon their upper surface, and lighter-colored beneath.

The tree emits no odor perceptible at any distance. The bark of  the root has the odor of cinnamon with the pungency of camphor, and yields this principle upon distillation. The leaves have a spicy odor when rubbed,  and a hot taste. A volatile oil has been distilled from them. The petiole has the flavor of cinnamon. The flowers have a disagreeable, fetid odor. The fruit has a terebinthinate odor when opened, and a taste in some  degree like that of juniper berries. A fatty substance, called cinnamon-suet, is  obtained from it when ripe, by bruising it and then boiling it in water, and removing the oleaginous matter  which rises to the surface and concretes upon cooling. The Ceylon cinnamon is produced  chiefly from cultivated plants, the principal gardens being in the viainity; of Colombo.  Here the plant is never allowed to become a tree but by vigorous cutting back is forced to  produce a bushy growth of slender stems. The seeds are planted four or five in a  hill and the first five or six years the stems are pruned to be straight, then  cut down and by coppicing produce a new crop of shoots.

The cinnamon harvest commences in May and continues until late in  October. Before decortication the shoots are trimmed up, and the small pieces,  when dried, constitute cinnamon chips. The bark is divided by longitudinal  incisions, of which two are made in the smaller shootsr several in the larger,  and is then removed in strips by ,means of a suitable instrument. The pieces are  next collected in bundles, and allowed to remain in this state for a short time,  so as to undergo a degree of fermentation, which facilitates the separation of  the epidermis. This, with the green matter beneath it, is removed by placing the  strip of bark upon a convex piece of wood and scraping its external surface with  a curved knife.

C. iners Reinw. is distinguished from C. zeylanicum by the  nervation of its leaves, which are also paler and thinner. It is probably only a variety, not a distinct  species. It yields the so-called wild cinnamon of Japan. C. obtusifolium Nees, growing  in Ceylon, Java, and on the mainland of India, is said to have been the chief  source of the drug known formerly by the name of Folia Malabathri and consisting of the leaves of different  species of Cinnamomum mixed together. C. Culilawan Blume of the Moluccas yields  the aromatic bark called culilawan, noticed in Part II of this work; and similar  barks are obtained from C. Sintoc of Java. Massoy bark, from which an aromatic  volatile oil is obtained called oil of massoy, is the product of Sassafras  Goesianum Leijom. In the mountains of Eastern Bengal, at a height of 1000 to  4000 feet, flourish C. obtusifolium Nees, C. pauciflorum Nees, and C. Tamala  Nees et Ebern., and these, with other unknown species, afford quantities of bark  which are shipped from Calcutta, Java, Timor, etc., to Europe under the name of wild cassia. The bark of the C. pedatinervium  Meissn., a tree indigenous to Fiji, yields nearly one per cent. of a  white aromatic volatile oil, with a pungent spicy taste.

For constitution, etc., see Proc. Chem. Soc., xix. These barks are mostly  highly aromatic, resembling cinnamon more or less closely in flavor, and are distinguished by  yielding to cold water an abundant mucilage. Holmes described the bark of  C. pedativum Meis., and concludes that it might be of value as a source of  safrol and linalool in P. J., 1904, p. 892.

Description and Physical Properties. - Unground Cinnamon. In quills up to  30 cm. long and 4cm. in diameter, the bark from 0.5 to 3.0 mm. in thickness, or  in broken irregular pieces or in flattened slabs up to 8'mm. in thickness; the outer surface  light brown to dark purplish-brown, with grayish patches of crustose lichens and numerous  bud-scars, finely wrinkled when from young twigs, otherwise, more or less rough from corky  patches surrounding the lenticels; inner surface reddish-brown to dark brown, granular  and slightly striate; fracture short; odor characteristic and aromatic; taste sweetish,  aromatic and pungent.

Structure.-A narrow outer layer of more or less lignified cork cells  followed by a layer of starch-bearing parenchyma with scattered stone cells and  a nearly continuous zone of stone cells among which are small groups of  bast-fibers with thickened and slightly lignified walls ; inner bark with  medullary rays 1 to 3 cells wide, inconspicuous sieve tissue, bast-fibers in  groups of 2 to 20, mucilage and oil cells numerous and about the size of the  parenchyma cells; parenchyma cells usually filled with starch or containing very  small raphides of calcium Oxalate the Lumina of parenchyma cells, stone cells and bast-fibers frequently filled with an amorphous reddish-brown substance,  which is for the most part insoluble in the ordinary reagents. In the bark of  the young twigs there is an epidermal layer with a thick, yellowish cuticle, fewer stone cells in the zone associated with bast-fibers, the inner bark narrower and with fewer secretion  cells than in the older bark.

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