hey...

being quite the keen spice collector that i am, i have had UNTOLD amounts of grief with spice merchants claiming 'cinnamon' when they were selling me cassia...

the zeylanicum species is true cinnamon. thin, scroll-like quills. cassia is scroll-like also, though not as densely rolled, if that makes sense. the leaves of the cassia are also fragrant. they look like bayleaves, only with a thin vein that skirts the perimetre of the leaf...

hope that was of some help...

muzzbait - thanks for the info, I buy both Cinnamon and Cassia, cassia is the correct spice for chinese and south east asian dishes, afterall, that's what they use. I use ceylon cinnamon for indian dishes and desserts. I do prefer the flavour of C.zeylanicum. C.cassia is stronger, hotter and very high in mucliage too, you can get some interesting gluey effects with it in combination with dairy...yuck!

Now here's the interesting part. There is a third species, endemic to India which is used primarily for its fragrant leaves, Cinnamomum tamala. I buy the dried leaves for curries and these leaves look a lot like the tree I was shown in FNQ. I wonder if C.tamala plants have been sold in australia under the pseudonym C.zeylanicum? Any thoughts on this?

i always thought the variety was the c. cinnomamum, or something similar to that. the indians call it 'tej pattar' or something similar...the tamala variety is SOOO ridiculously similar, however there is a sharper, more biting 'zest' to the leaf. i didn't know all of this, but i asked a question to kurma dasa, the world-renown chef, as he uses the cassia leaves. you should be able to find them at all well-stocked indian groceries. however, sometimes they try to pass of bay leaves for cassia leaves and vice versa. so yeah...

i'll have to give that dairy and mucousy gluey thing a go; sounds delightful...

i hope what i said up there makes sense. some of it still goes over my head, to tell you the truth...

can you post a picture of the leaf you have, or the one you're looking for? or both, even???

Ahh very interesting. Yes I will take the pictures tonight and post them, standby!

Here it is.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cinnamon leaves

christ...i gotta say that both leaves (tej pattar and yours...) look pretty damn similar...i work with a sri lankan guy and he reckons in his native country there are THOUSANDS of different types of cinnamon trees. they are all just a little bit different, yet they all share the same, basic characteristics...man, i hope i didn't confuse you with anything!

Maybe you need to see the plants yourself to gain full appreciation of the differences. The habit of the overall trees as well as the morphological differences in leaf shape, vein spacing new foliage colouration etc are very convincing. The main difference (we are interested in) is the consistent lack of any essential oil in the leaves of the zeylanicum, which makes it useless for cooking!

I'm not certain how many Cinnamomum species there are in India greater but I'm certain it's not thousands, probably more like a dozen at the very most. In my experience people from these countries are the least reliable source of information on details such as these. Confusion in regional naming, inexplicable variations in spelling and pronunciation and plain ignorance are rife, all that confounded by the ubiquitous air of self proclaimed authority on the subject make it very difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.

ahhh...the oil lacking in the zeylanicum (trus cinnamon) would make it useless! man...how do you know that essential oil is missing, though?

well, my work colleague was just exaggerating, i would assume. positively speaking, however, there are at least ten i have heard of...maybe they are all the known ones, so yeah...but i must say, in all my (lack of) experience, most of the ones i've seen (in books, that is...) looked pretty similar.

i totally agree with you on the ignorance of the locals of that region. generally, also, they have the arrogance to consider themselves the ONLY people who would know about plants like these. they get all high and mighty about it, too. i've had it happen to me once or twice! ummm...at the risk of perhaps going through something a little redundant, check the following site out. look around the inventory and click the relevant spice links.

let me ask you: does your plant grow well in adelaide? i thought that cinnamon would only grow in the tropics...

Here is a link that might be useful: various spices...

Hi again muzzbait, thanks again for your interest. Seems like noone else is very interested in spices! I'm self confessed mad about all things spicy. I know Gernot's site, isn't it incredible? I've been in correspondance with Gernot about other spices, different cardamom species. We should keep in touch regarding spices, feel free to drop me an email if you discover anything new, or have questions I might be able to help with. Lets compare collections some time...

wowsers! would you believe that in a few months time i am going to malaysia, mainly to track down some TRUE zedoary? turns out all the zedoary they sell dried at indian/indonesian grocers is actually lesser galangal, which is a find in itself, but yeah...

i would LOVE to compare spices some time. i have roughly 45 different spices, including grains of paradise, mahleb and white cardamom. i have all the other common ones, and with any luck, i'll have some zedoary to add to that list.

the spices that seem to evade me are: long pepper, cubeb, black limes and safflower. i can find the oil, but not the stigmas...

i think the WORST thing about having and accumulating so many spices is the goddamn vendors you have to deal with. man, they really annoy me. i remember once, in an indian grocers, i was looking at some frozen fenugreek (methi) leaves, and the condescending owner approached me, and TOTALLY without and prompting says "you've never seen that leaf before...", so i then proceeded to LIE through my teeth, just to make him squirm and make him feel like crap. i told him i lived in tamil nadu, in kanchipuram (my brother did all this, so i had plenty of stuff to lie about...), and that i used to run cooking classes for foreigners there, and that i knew all about their spices. being greek, i also added that the greeks used fenugreek a few millennia before the indians even knew what it was! man...i mean, what a jerk off. i bet if i was some indian mummy's boy that didn't know the difference between a knife or spoon he wouldn't've accosted me like that. jerk.

anyway, yeah...are there many markets for you to find these exotic flavourings in adelaide? i do most of my shopping in vietnamese grocers, mainly because they don't follow you around the store when you're browsing, also because they are sometimes a quarter of the price, and also because you don't get the frustrating pretension of some over-zealous shop clerk who blabs to you about how extensive his country's cuisine is. seriously, i've had it up to here with know-it-all spice shop owners. this one person tried to tell me that there was no such thing as tej pat! and that it was bay leaf!!!

anyway...i'll keep in touch with you, man...my name is mario, by the way...

It looks like we do need to catch up, I have long pepper, cubeb pepper and black limes. :) I know what you mean about the arrogance of these vendors, and the accompanying ignorace... Drop me an email at stonor@optusnet.com.au so we don't use the public forum as a chatroom!

ps. I also have some zedoary... or at least I think it is.