CINNAMON OR TRUE CINNAMON - Intercom Exports

TAXANOMY
Cinnamonum verum is a medium sized tree with smooth grey,fragrant bark,
terminal bud with few inconspicuous bud scales, early caduceus.bark is the economically
useful part of cinnamon. The bark tissue is characterized by secretion cells containing
mucilage or oil. The prescence of islands of sclerenchyma in the pericyclic region is a
characteristic feature of certain sps., including C. verum and C. cassia. These bark
characters are useful in the detection of adulterations of true cinnamon with wild
cinnamon.
Leaves variable in size, ovate, ovate- lanceolate or elliptic, opposite, triplinerved,
the two basal or sub basallateral nerves, strongly ascent, often reaching the tip of the leaf.
Hairs simple when present; oil and mucilage cells are always present in both mesophyll
layers. Idioblasts are also present in the palisade and spongy parenchyma.
Flowers in panicle , pseudoterminal many flowered. Flowers pale yellow, perianth
silky, bracts deciduous, actinomorphic , bisexual , trimerous, perigynoius, perianth in two
whorls of these each, stamens 9+3 in four whorls of three each on slender filaments, the
innermost row modified into staminodes rather well developed with stalks. Fertile
stamines show valvular dehiscense. Ovary superior, one celled with one pendulous ovule,
style well developed with triangular stigma.
Fruit is a fleshy ovoid berry, black to purplish black,glossy, one seeded. The
perianth tube growing out into a more or less deep fleshy cup in which the base of the
fruit is seated. The tepals at the rim are indurate and persistent entirely or only partly.
POLLINATION
Flowers are adopted to cross pollination. Each flower opens on 2 consecytive
days; the first day the stigma is receptive and on the second day the anthers dehisce. The
pollination agents are honey bees.
GENETIC RESOURCES
In order to collect and conserve the available variability in these crops, systematic
surveys have been made since 1976 in different parts of India. Exotic collections have
also been made in cinnamon. These indigenous and exotic germplasm collections are
being maintained at the germplasm repository at NRC for spices Calicut. They include