Bio Diversity Park

Common Name : True Cinnamon

Hindi Name : दालचीनी | Scientific Name : Cinnamomum verum
Family : Laureaceae
Uses : Cinnamon is among the earliest, most popular spices used by mankind. The commercial presentation of cinnamon is the dried inner bark of the tree, or the milled bark. The bark oil, bark oleoresin, and leaf oil are important value-added products from cinnamon. Bark oil is used in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Cinnamon leaf oil is cheaper than bark oil and is used in the flavour industry. Cinnamon oleoresin, obtained by solvent extraction of the bark, is used mainly for flavouring food products such as cakes and confectionary, soft drinks, and other beverages. Cinnamon essential oil has been used as an ingredient in many medicinal preparations; the oil from bark is an aphrodisiac, anthelmintic, and tonic. It is useful in the treatment of biliousness, parched mouth, bronchitis, diarrhoea, itching, and heart and urinary disease; it is also carminative and expectorant, and is useful in hydrocoele, flatulence, headache, piles, etc.
Native: Sri Lanka
General Description:

 It is a small, evergreen tree, 10–15m tall. The bark is widely employed as a spice; its leaves are ovate oblong in shape, and 7–18cm long. The flowers, arranged in panicles, have a greenish colour and have a rather disagreeable odour. The fruit is a purple 1 cm berry containing a single seed. It is found in tropical rain forests, where it grows at various altitudes from highland slopes to lowland forests and occurs in both marshy places and on well-drained soils.