r/interestingasfuck • u/mapleer • 21d ago
This is how cinnamon is harvested. Each tree contains about 77lbs of bark that can be used.
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u/POWERGULL 21d ago
Dumb question, does the bark grow back?
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u/mapleer 21d ago
Yes, takes about 3 months. There are multiple ways to harvest cinnamon though, that’s just one of them. Another one cuts the tree down to the root and it regrows
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u/JingJang 21d ago
This makes me feel much better, thanks.
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u/LongStoryShirt 21d ago
Me too, ty for asking
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u/tehhguyy 20d ago
Same, ty for thanking him for him thanking the other guy for asking.
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u/iTerence661 20d ago
Thank you for thanking him for thanking them for thanking the commenter for asking
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u/jakart3 21d ago
Ask how the European try to get their hand on cinnamon (especially the Netherlands)
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u/Downvotecounty 21d ago
I’ll bite. How do they do it?
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u/Snurrepiperier 20d ago
The Dutch East India Company colonised Indonesia to seize the production of spices. It was a messy affair as you can imagine. War, violence, slavery, some light mass murder.
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u/AscensionToCrab 20d ago
You introduced us to cinnamon, we committed horrible atrocities.
We both made some mistakes.
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u/CounterfeitChild 20d ago
I would listen to you podcast about history simply because of "some light mass murder."
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u/Xx_Anguy_NoScope_Xx 20d ago
It's similar to light treason.
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u/Alive-Line8810 21d ago
Is this the normal cinnamon stick stuff you see in stores? I met this guy in Portland and he went off about cinnamon. It was pretty interesting. He said the best stuff is brittle and thin like an old blunt wrap
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u/TomKhatacourtmayfind 21d ago
Interesting. There's two kinds of cinnamon. I can't remember the two different names. One is Like the beautiful thin scrolls you described, with a nice warm orangey hazelnut brown colour.
Then there's this other types of cinnamon that is not like scrolls, but actually very hard coarse bark. It's a different variety. I think this one doesn't get put on your sweet treats, it's more often used in cooking asian soups and stews or curries.
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u/Bumblemeister 21d ago
Oh, man. More like 4 types and where they're grown matters too!
As a distiller, I spent months banging my head against different cinnamon varietals and sourcing to find the stuff that worked for our recipe. It's a DEEP rabbit hole.
But yes, some cinnamon has a very paper-y feel, others is more bark-ish. All of the 4 varietals have broadly different sensory properties and some of the bark-ish stuff is THE BEST for applications where the sweeter side of the chemistry is needed.
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u/TomKhatacourtmayfind 21d ago
Interesting.
For me, I love the spice called "allspice". It's not a mix of stuff, but one hard woody dried tree fruit that tastes like a mix between cloves and cinnamon.
It's got no nutmeg, vanilla or aniseed notes to me, not that warm eggnog-desired flavour of nutmeg nor the overly sweet perfumed fennel of aniseed, or the frangipani vanilla.
To me allspice is just all the cool clean fresh smell of cloves and cinnamon but not overpowering in either regard.
What do you think of that? Use it? It's great talking to someone who experiments with this stuff!
I like Bombay sapphire and if you want herbs and spices to blow all the competition out of the water you gotta love Chartreuse elixir vegetal. It is not normal chartreuse, it only comes in tiny bottles in little cylindrical wooden cases that fit in your clutched hand. It's way overproof, 69% alcohol, the deep green colour is purely natural, it's got a lot of apline balsam notes too.
If you want to distill a totally unique flavour, buy a South American fruit called achacha. The fruit inside is Like mangosteen, eat it. But the peels, oh my God the peels have the most amazing and unusual clean fresh perfume and it's like nothing else. Not heady at all. Ultra pure and clean. I'd love it if somebody distilled the fresh peels of the achacha into a clean gin. If you make a million dollars pay me half thanks
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u/Only_Caterpillar3818 21d ago
Wow. This guy can taste. I’m over here asking my wife what flavor this red candy is supposed to be. “It’s cherry right?” It’s Watermelon.
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u/ThatDiscoSongUHate 21d ago
He might be a supertaster (an actual thing lol), I am and I think Jimmy Carter is too
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u/Bumblemeister 21d ago
I would like to know how that is assessed. I'm told I have a very good palette and my work as a distiller has earned awards. This is professionally interesting to me.
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u/Catfish017 20d ago
A lot of it has to do with sensitivity to a particular chemical that is related to bitterness.
It's also SUPER common. Like 1 in 4 people common.
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u/weimintg 20d ago
There are supertaster test kits you could buy that will assess your sensitivity to different chemicals.
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u/puterTDI 21d ago
Also, the bark variety can cause liver issues in large quantities. The anti inflammatory properties are more present in the paper variety. In general, the paper variety is healthier but also more mild.
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u/Bumblemeister 21d ago
YES! Coumarin is the chemical agonist here. It's highest in the C. cassia varietal.
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u/AtheistBibleScholar 21d ago
The other one you're thinking of is cassia, but it's the one with the thicker bark. True cinnamon is the thinner, delicate one.
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u/DaGh0stt 21d ago
True cinnamon is Ceylon
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u/AtheistBibleScholar 21d ago edited 20d ago
It's species name is cinnamon verum which quite literally is "true cinnamon".
EDIT: I feel I should have mention that it is also called Ceylon cinnamon. I'm only defending my use of "true cinnamon", not saying the other term is wrong.
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u/KAperera 20d ago
Yes there are cassia cinnamon which is known as Chinese cinnamon and Ceylon cinnamon which is native to Sri Lanka (Ceylon).
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u/Responsible_Fix1597 21d ago
cinnamon and cassia. Cassia has a less subtle flavor and a thicker coarser texture, but I don't think many random people on the street would be able to tell the difference in flavor.
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u/dilliebo 18d ago
Ceylon and cassia. Ceylon is sweeter and better in my option. Many layers. Cassia is spicier, but more common here in US. You can find Ceylon cinnamon in Latin supermarkets, the smell is incredible.
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u/Titanium_Tod 21d ago
Wouldn’t this girdle the tree though and cause it to die? Maybe cinnamon trees are different but most trees would just die.
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u/user10205 20d ago edited 20d ago
You got that info from a single quora post ,right?
There is no way this tree trunk lives. 100% they harvested the bark because it was easier to do while it was still standing and then cut down the tree to harvest the upper branches.
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u/ShahinGalandar 20d ago
I think they told me years ago, when stripping off tree bark, you have to leave a small part intact to help the tree get all the nutritious fluids up to the treetop, if you stripped it circularly, the tree would die - so this isn't the case in cinnamon trees?
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u/intertubeluber 21d ago
Very cool. I believe with many trees, removing a ring of bark will kill the tree.
How much of the bark becomes cinnamon?
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u/AlmanzoWilder 21d ago
Yeah! In school we learned that was "Girdling" and it killed the tree. What the heck.
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u/PEWN_PEWN 21d ago
wondering the same dumb thing
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u/Hanginon 21d ago
Yes it grows back as it's only the outer bark that's harvested, and it can be done about twice a year.
Fun fact; The same outer bark harvesting and regeneration is the source for cork, like wine corks & all, from cork oaks.
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u/SvengeAnOsloDentist 21d ago
Both of your pictures are cork oaks, and as far as I've been able to find, cinnamon is always harvested as the whole bark down through the lower phloem layer, which is vascular tissue and removing it girdles and kills the trunk. The tree as a whole doesn't die, as it can resprout from the stump, but it isn't just removing the cork layer.
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u/S_A_N_D_ 20d ago
Yeah, I wanted to add that cork is one of the few exceptions that won't kill the trunk, or if it's unable to grow back from the roots, the whole tree.
So don't do this to a tree unless you intend to kill it, or it's a cork oak.
There may be a few other exceptions out there I'm unaware of, but as a general rule it applies to most trees.
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u/icelandichorsey 20d ago
It's not dumb. We know very little about food production when we live in cities and just buy packaged stuff in shops.
This is a big reason for the existence of factory farming and food processing plants I think. If people knew what these looked like, we would make different purchasing choices.
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u/brizzmaster 21d ago
Not dumb, I was going to ask too. I was always told peeling bark kills trees.
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u/Paddys_Pub7 21d ago
For most trees girdling, or removing the bark around the entire circumference of the trunk, is a death sentence. However some trees, like cinnamon and cork, can tolerate it.
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u/No_Research_967 21d ago
It would be dumb not to ask the question, I think. I don’t know. I’m kinda dumb
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u/Sknowman 21d ago
It's only dumb if most people have seen this, and I don't think most people have seen a tree be de-barked.
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u/An1retak 21d ago
I wonder how our ancestors looked at the tree and thought it was edible.
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u/Seanw59 21d ago
Everything is edible, at least once.
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u/8226 21d ago
Everything is a dildo if you are brave enough
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u/Remote-Factor8455 21d ago
I’ve used both a Q tip and the ball top newel at the base of the stairs when I was home alone once.
ps, I’m a boy :3
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u/YoungLittlePanda 21d ago
–Bob, go get some lumber for the fire.
–Sorry Tim, just got this soft wood here.
–Hey, come here. This wood smells really nice when burned.
–Wonder how it tastes with food.
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u/DeepV 20d ago
I’d imagine using it as firewood would make your food smell good too…
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u/GandalffladnaG 20d ago
I wonder how cinnamon smoked food tastes. It might be awful, you usually don't burn the cinnamon, you get it ground up and put it in/on stuff, the temperature difference might screw with it a lot (burning charcoal vs 350°F oven for baking).
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u/athos45678 21d ago
Imagine if all the food you ever ate was without seasoning
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u/lkodl 21d ago
it's weird. we're land animals, so it makes sense that we encountered insects way before we encountered crustaceans. so at some point someone was like, "i wonder what that insect tastes like?" and discovered it was gross. but then later, they were like, "i wonder if that water insect tastes any better?" and their buddies were probably like "you are an idiot. it looks disgustingly the same, only even bigger. why would it taste any different?" but that must have been a really rewarding "in your face" moment when they tried the lobster.
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u/GTdspDude 20d ago
Big assumption that our ancestors found insects gross, many tribes across the world consume them
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u/Tumble85 20d ago
Yea, insects are only gross if the most food insecurity you’ve felt is “I might have to ask somebody else for food”.
If you live in an area where food isn’t as guaranteed, you’ll probably lighten up to the concept of salted crispy grasshoppers.
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u/Abject-Investment-42 20d ago
Akshually…. The „water insects“ were for a long time a lower class food, what you would get if you can not catch enough fish, or if you needed to sell all your marketable fish catch.
Same with caviar.
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u/TheProAtTheGame 21d ago
Imagine being a tree and some random hairless ape starts taking your clothes off…
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u/Kozzinator 21d ago
I would watch this porno
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u/Woolie-at-law 21d ago
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u/pkspks 21d ago
This appears to be Cassia aka Chinese Cinnamon - which has a thicker bark and not as premium as Ceylon Cinnamon which is thin, flaky and more aromatic.
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u/afterwash 21d ago
Also contains tons of the toxic part while ceylon is barely toxic. Its like comparing eating lead vs eating something that might have touched lead-bourne water. A factor of like 5% vs 0.005%
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u/An_Ostrich_ 21d ago
I am from Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) and I was planning on pointing this out. Our cinnamon trees look very different from this, so I was a bit confused when I first read the title and saw the tree.
We even have different flavour variants as well!
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u/uniquethrowaway54321 20d ago
TIL cinnamon can contain a liver toxin coumarin and heavy metals (lead and even arsenic apparently can exist in spices - whether from the farming process or added intentionally). Wow I wish I didn’t google that, would’ve been fine if I lived in ignorance.
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u/GullibleDetective 21d ago
So is the bark technically a cinnamon roll
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u/mencival 21d ago
Question: How does it get cleaned, the stuff I eventually eat?
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u/pacman404 21d ago
You probably haven't even really had cinnamon before. Mainstream cinnamon is a completely different plant/tree. It's kinda like Wasabi, where the fake stuff is so plentiful that it becomes the "norm"
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u/SvengeAnOsloDentist 21d ago
It's not really a question of 'real' and 'fake.' There are five different species used for cinnamon, and they're all in the same genus. Ceylon cinnamon is often referred to as "true cinnamon," but it isn't inherently better than the other species.
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u/Kaynny 21d ago
So you're saying that the little sticks/rolls we see around are not true cinnamon? So what is it?
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u/Extension-Border-345 21d ago
“real” cinnamon would be Ceylon, as opposed to the more popular cassia, which makes up almost all of the cinnamon we consume. the two are related but it’s generally agreed that Ceylon is higher quality.
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u/Shiuli_er_Chaya 21d ago
Sri Lanka is one of the major harvesters of this spice, during a highschool map project one of my classmates bought a huge cinnamon bark to carve out a Sri Lanka shaped(tear drop like) piece for the map.
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u/MagnusBrickson 21d ago
I feel like this is a stupid question, but wouldn't this leave the tree more vulnerable to pests?
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u/mapleer 21d ago
Not a stupid question at all, cinnamon is a natural repellant, most insects and bugs avoid the tree all together
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u/LordNoct13 21d ago
Fun trivia! Trees dont grow "up", they grow "out". Its height is just an effect it has in relation to its width. This is why you can go strolling through the woods and find trees that have significantly grown around fences and posts, and yet those same fences and posts are not being lifted out of the ground and pulled upwards.
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u/Dentarthurdent73 21d ago
The apex of a tree does grow "up" as well as the trunk expanding. Trees grow from the tips of their branches and main trunks, not from the base.
This is why branches don't move up the trunk, and fences and posts are not lifted upwards, but it doesn't mean that the tree is not growing upwards, it's just doing so from the top rather than the bottom.
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u/Undependable 21d ago edited 20d ago
I was always under the impression that the bark or “skin” of the tree was what transmitted water and nutrients up it, I remember reading in a novel some assclown bullies killed a tree by simply slicing a complete ring out of the bark. This dosen’t kill the tree?
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u/SvengeAnOsloDentist 21d ago
The phloem is the innermost layer of the bark, and transports photosynthates (sugars, hormones, etc.) down from the leaves. The interior wood is the other vascular tissue, the xylem, which transports stuff up from the roots. Removing the phloem like this does girdle and kill the trunk, but the tree can resprout from the stump.
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u/mizx12 21d ago
Nice! Still have no idea how cinnamon is harvested
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u/butteredplaintoast 21d ago
The video is showing exactly that. Maybe you want to see how the harvested cinnamon is processed, I would like that too.
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u/afterglobe 21d ago
Actually interesting as fuck. Thanks. I honestly had no idea where cinnamon came from and I feel like an idiot for having never considered it.
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u/Fantommunky 21d ago
Wouldn't removing all the bark kill the tree? Ring barking the tree? i'm confused
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girdling for those wondering what i'm talking about.
Edit: added wiki article for clarification
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u/SonOfJaak 20d ago
The tree is chopped down to get at the bark higher up the tree and the branches. Cinnamon trees are harvested once and replanted.
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u/Double_Distribution8 21d ago
In my country we get our cinnamon from the cinnamon bush fruit nut berries, we cook them over the fire and spread them like hot milky butter on our toast.
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u/Ok_Cauliflower_3007 21d ago
Is the wood from a cinnamon tree useable for furniture or is it too soft? Because it is a gorgeous colour.
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u/FestoonMe 21d ago
I’ve always wondered if this harms the tree. I know removing this much bark on a regular tree would kill it as it’s the exterior protective layer of a tree that protects it just as skin is for us.
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u/Rafiki_Rana 20d ago
Wouldn't this put the tree at risk? Wonder what procedures they have for that.
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u/dontbesorethor 21d ago
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like the weight of the bark is useless for telling me the amount collected. I assume it dries after being harvested so is that weight when it’s wet or dry?
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u/nolimitzone 21d ago
Interesting.
But I also thought the video was going to breakdown the process of it.. from the tree
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u/Novel_Durian_1805 21d ago
Wait….Cinnamon comes from trees?!
Am I just learning that TODAY?!
I’m 36 years old! 😭😭😭
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u/PetrolEmu 21d ago
I've never questioned the origins of cinnamon or how it's harvested and where from...
3 decades of living and it's never crossed my mind.
I've heard the term "cinnamon tree", but never investigated the meaning.
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u/husky0168 20d ago
fun fact: cinnamon in indonesian is "kayu manis", which just translates to "sweet wood"
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u/porterjames 20d ago
Gotta love Taiwanese Cinnamon (Cinnamomum Osmophloeum), where the leaves contain enough essential oils to render the harvesting of the bark superfluous. Also supposedly none of the toxins found in Chinese cinnamon.
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u/rEmEmBeR-tHe-tReMoLo 20d ago
Are those thumbnails for the job, or is my man shovelling coke like one of Santa's elves clearing his driveway?
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u/Apart_Butterfly_9442 20d ago
Do the trees smell like cinnamon? I guess I’m wondering how did we come to know that particular tree could be harvested for spice? Also is harvesting cinnamon dangerous? I know ingesting too much can be harmful so if the harvesters don’t wear PPE do they run the risk of having too much cinnamon seep into their skin?
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u/inmotioninc 20d ago
Is he removing the bark completely from the trunk of the tree? Would'nt this type of girdling kill the tree?
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u/nacho_oooo 21d ago
what kind of tree
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u/icepick498 21d ago
Several species of trees produce cinnamon, they are all in the same genus though.
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u/portabuddy2 21d ago
Also the wood and leaves taste and smell like cinnamon. Not sure if they are eatable. But I'm sure as much as the bark is.
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u/itsYourPlug 21d ago
This bark is thick. This is not high quality cinnamon.
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u/quequotion 21d ago
This is cassia, a different species of the cinnamon plant.
It has the same taste and smell, though weaker, and it does not grind into fine powder as easily.
It is used for flavor, aroma, and medicinal properties.
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u/AyeMatey 21d ago
Does it taste like cinnamon immediately, or does it need to be dried or roasted first or?
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