Cinnamomum is a genus of evergreen aromatic trees and shrubs belonging to the laurel family, Lauraceae. The species of Cinnamomum have aromatic oils in their leaves and bark. The genus contains about 227 species,[1] distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania/Australasia. The genus includes a great number of economically important trees used to produce the spice cinnamon. The oldest fossils are known from the Cretaceous,[2][3]but the group reached a peak of diversity during the Eocene.[2]
This genus is present in the Himalayas and other mountain areas, in tropical and subtropical montane rainforests, in weed-tree forests, in valleys, and in mixed forests of coniferous and deciduous broad-leaved trees, in southern China, India, and Southeast Asia.
All species tested so far are diploid, with the total number of chromosomes being 24.[4] This Lauraceae genus comprises approximately 250 trees and shrubs and most are aromatic. Some trees produce sprouts. The thick, leathery leaves are dark green, lauroid type. Laurophyll or lauroid leaves are characterized by a generous layer of wax, making them glossy in appearance, and narrow, pointed oval in shape with an 'apical mucro', or 'drip tip', which permits the leaves to shed water despite the humidity, allowing respiration from plant.
Mostly, the plants present a distinct odor. Their alternate leaves are ovate-elliptic, with margins entire or occasionally repand, with acute apices and broadly cuneate to subrounded bases. Upper leaf surfaces are shiny green to yellowish-green, while the undersides are opaque and lighter in color. Mature leaves are dark green. Young leaves are reddish brown to yellowish-red. The leaves are glabrous on both surfaces or sparsely puberulent beneath only when young; the leaves are mostly triplinerved or sometimes inconspicuously five-nerved, with conspicuous midrib on both surfaces. The axils of lateral nerves and veins are conspicuously bullate above and dome-shaped. Terminal buds are perulate.
The axillary panicle is 3.5–7cm long. It is a genus of monoecious species, with hermaphrodite flowers, greenish white, white to yellow are glabrous or downy and pale to yellowish brown. Mostly the flowers are small. The perianth is glabrous or puberulent outside and densely pubescent inside. The purplish-black fruit is an ovate, ellipsoidal or subglobose drupe. The perianth-cup in fruit is cupuliform.
Cinnamomum tree in a 10th-century Arabic manuscriptBark of Cinnamomum camphoraDrawing of Cinnamomum iners Reinwardt. ex Blume by J.C.P. Arckenhausen, ~1835Cinnamomum kotoense inflorescence
The inner bark of several species is used to make the spice cinnamon. C. tamala is used as the herb malabathrum, also called tejpat or Indian bay leaf.
Taxonomy
A 2017 molecular study found that species from the tropical Americas classed in Cinnamomum were not closely related to the Asian and Australasian species, and have been reclassified in the genus Aiouea.[5]
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