True Cinnamon
Cinnamomum verum
A true cinnamon quill looks almost too delicate to be tree bark. Viewed from the end, it's made from layer after layer of thin material curled together, sometimes enough that the centre resembles a tightly rolled piece of paper. That structure comes from the way Cinnamomum verum is harvested. The rough outer bark is removed, the softer inner bark is carefully peeled away and the strips curl naturally as they dry.
Making those quills is skilled work with a much less delicate history. Sri Lankan cinnamon was valuable long before Europeans reached the island, but Portuguese, Dutch and later British colonial powers all sought control over its production. Under the Dutch East India Company in particular, the familiar rolled bark became part of a tightly controlled industry supported by compulsory labour.
There's considerably more behind a cinnamon quill than its scent.
Classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Order: Laurales
Family: Lauraceae
Genus: Cinnamomum
Species: Cinnamomum verum
Common Names: True Cinnamon, Ceylon Cinnamon
Plant Form: Evergreen tree
Material: Dried inner bark
Native Range: Sri Lanka
Building a Quill
Left alone, Cinnamomum verum can grow into a substantial evergreen tree. Cinnamon cultivation asks something rather different of it. Plants are cut back to encourage straight young shoots that provide bark suitable for peeling.
First the coarse outer bark has to come away. Beneath it is the thinner inner bark that becomes cinnamon.
Removing long, clean sections requires experience. Once peeled, the strips begin curling inwards as they lose moisture. Smaller pieces can be fitted inside larger ones, building the compound quill characteristic of true cinnamon before the whole structure is dried further.
Break one and the construction is still visible. Numerous papery layers appear around the hollow centre rather than one thick piece of bark.
It's a useful reminder that the neat quill didn't grow on the tree in that form. Somebody made it.
Not Every Cinnamon Is This Cinnamon
Several Cinnamomum species provide the aromatic bark sold under the broad name cinnamon.
Chinese cassia and Indonesian cinnamon are close relatives of C. verum, but their dried bark doesn't behave quite the same way. Cassia is generally thicker, harder and darker, often curling as a substantial piece rather than forming the many fine layers characteristic of a true cinnamon quill.
The aroma differs too. C. verum is generally described as softer and more delicate, while cassia tends towards a stronger, sharper character.
Calling C. verum “true cinnamon” can make the others sound like imitations. They aren't. They're different aromatic barks with their own botanical identities and histories.
Put the sticks beside one another and the distinction becomes much easier to see.
Before Europeans Found the Source
Sri Lanka's cinnamon trade didn't begin with European ships.
The bark had already been moving through regional and Indian Ocean trading networks for centuries, carried by merchants far beyond the island where the trees grew. By the medieval period, Sri Lanka was recognised as an important source of particularly valuable cinnamon.
Production also already depended on local knowledge and labour. Communities collected and prepared bark through existing systems of service and taxation, while cinnamon formed an important source of revenue for Sri Lankan rulers.
European arrival didn't create the value of cinnamon.
It created new attempts to control it.
When Bark Became Worth Conquering
The Portuguese arrived in Sri Lanka in the early 16th century and gradually sought greater control over coastal territory and its lucrative cinnamon trade.
During the following century, another European power entered the struggle. In 1638, the Dutch East India Company, or VOC, allied with the Kingdom of Kandy against the Portuguese. The Kandyan kingdom wanted Portuguese forces removed. The VOC had commercial ambitions of its own.
Portuguese strongholds gradually fell, with Colombo captured in 1656 and the remaining Portuguese possessions lost by 1658. The Dutch then retained coastal territories rather than simply transferring them to Kandyan control.
Cinnamon was central to what followed.
Access to valuable growing areas became part of continuing negotiations and conflict between the VOC and Kandyan rulers. Control of the bark meant controlling land, labour and the routes through which cinnamon could reach international markets.
A spice small enough to hold between two fingers had become entangled with the politics of an entire island.
The Hands Behind the Cinnamon
Producing cinnamon wasn't simply a matter of finding a tree and removing some bark.
Under Dutch colonial rule, the Salagama community became particularly associated with the highly skilled work of cinnamon peeling. Workers operated within systems of compulsory service that required cinnamon and other labour to be provided to colonial authorities.
The VOC also attempted to control where cinnamon grew. Land containing valuable trees could be protected for Company use, limiting how local communities used or cleared it. During the 18th century, cultivated cinnamon gardens increasingly supplemented harvesting from wild trees, bringing production under still tighter organisation.
Resistance accompanied these demands. Cinnamon created enormous commercial value, but that value didn't mean the people peeling it were participating freely or benefiting equally from the trade.
Britain took Dutch controlled territories in 1796 and initially maintained the cinnamon monopoly. During the 19th century, the older systems of compulsory caste based labour and government monopoly were dismantled, while cultivation outside Sri Lanka made exclusive control of the crop increasingly unrealistic.
The quill remained.
The system around it changed repeatedly.
Why Cinnamon Smells Like Cinnamon
Much of cinnamon's immediately recognisable fragrance comes from cinnamaldehyde, one of the prominent volatile compounds in its bark.
It isn't working alone. Other aromatic constituents contribute sweeter, woody and more complex notes, producing the complete fragrance of a cinnamon quill rather than a single isolated smell.
Breaking the bark exposes more surface and releases the aroma more readily. Whole quills keep much of it enclosed between their layers, which is one reason a jar can seem fairly restrained until a piece is snapped.
Even other parts of the tree are aromatic. Cinnamon leaves contain their own volatile oils, although their composition and scent differ from those of the bark.
One tree has several ways of smelling like itself.
Prosperity with a Complicated History
Contemporary folk and metaphysical traditions commonly associate cinnamon with prosperity, success, attraction, protection and encouraging movement towards a desired outcome. It appears in incense and botanical work concerned with good fortune as well as protective practice.
Prosperity is an understandable association for something that spent centuries as an exceptionally valuable commodity.
It's also one worth looking at twice.
Cinnamon generated fortunes and helped sustain international trade, but the wealth attached to it existed alongside conquest, monopoly and compulsory labour. The bark can therefore carry an association with prosperity without its historical value being treated as an uncomplicated story of abundance.
Sometimes the history behind a symbol makes the symbolism more interesting, not less.
In the Apotheca
True cinnamon keeps evidence of both the tree and the person who prepared it.
The bark is botanical. The quill is made.
Look through a broken end and its construction becomes obvious. Thin sections curl around one another, fitted together before drying into a form recognisable centuries after Sri Lankan cinnamon peelers developed the skills required to produce it.
That craftsmanship is worth keeping visible alongside the fragrance and symbolism. So is the history of the people whose labour made cinnamon valuable to successive colonial powers.
A quill may be light enough to crumble between the fingers.
Its history is considerably heavier.
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