Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus Cinnamomum. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakfast cereals, snack foods, tea and traditional foods. The aroma and flavour of cinnamon derive from its essential oil and principal component, cinnamaldehyde, as well as numerous other constituents, including eugenol.

The Ceylon cinnamon or true cinnamon is the dried bark of Cinnamomum zealanicum, belongs to the family Lauraceae. It is indigenous to Sri Lanka. Cinnamomum zealanicum is an evergreen perennial plant with spirally arranged, broad laminated dark green leaves having palmate venation.

In Sri Lanka, cinnamon seems to have originated in the central hills where several species of cinnamon occur sporadically in places such as Kandy, Matale, Belihull Oya, Haputale and the Sinharaja forest range. Although cinnamon cultivation is presently concentrated along the coastal belt stretching along from Kaluthara to Mathara, it has also made inroads to the inland of Kalutara, Ambalangoda, Matara and Ratnapura. The extent under cinnamon in Sri Lanka is 25,500ha. Although the bulk of cinnamon plantations are about 70 – 80 years old, the size of holdings has been diminishing and only about 5-10% of the plantations are of sizeable extent ranging from 8 – 10ha.

BUYING CEYLON CINNAMON STICKS

Because of the huge variation in quality buyers should be careful where they buy Ceylon Cinnamon sticks from. Even Amazon has all manner of bogus Ceylon Cinnamon retailers.

Even organic Ceylon Cinnamon can be prone to fraud. It maybe organic but if the product has high ash content or low volatile oil content it does not matter if it is organic. It is useless and gives little of the benefits of Cinnamon.