Clove

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the spice. For other uses, see Clove (disambiguation).
"Cloves" redirects here. For the singer, see Cloves (singer).

Clove

Scientific classification

Kingdom: Plantae

(unranked): Angiosperms

(unranked): Eudicots

(unranked): Rosids

Order: Myrtales

Family: Myrtaceae
 Genus: Syzygium

Species: S. aromaticum

Binomial name

Syzygium aromaticum
(L.) Merrill & Perry

Synonyms[1]

Caryophyllus aromaticus L.
Eugenia aromatica (L.) Baill.
Eugenia caryophyllata Thunb.
Eugenia caryophyllus (Spreng.)
Bullock & S. G. Harrison

Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, Syzygium aromaticum.
They are native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice. Cloves are
commercially harvested primarily in Bangladesh,
Indonesia, India, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania. Cloves are available
throughout the year.

Contents
[hide]

1Botanical features
2Uses
o 2.1Non-culinary uses
o 2.2Traditional medicinal uses
o 2.3Potential medicinal uses
3Adulteration
4History
5Chemical compounds
6See also
7References
8Further reading

Botanical features[edit]
The clove tree is an evergreen that grows up to 812 m tall, with large leaves and crimson flowers
grouped in terminal clusters. The flower buds initially have a pale hue, gradually turn green, then
transition to a bright red when ready for harvest. Cloves are harvested at 1.52.0 cm long, and
consist of a long calyx that terminates in four spreading sepals, and four unopened petals that form a
small central ball.

Uses[edit]

Dried cloves

Clove tree flowers

Cloves are used in the cuisine of Asian, African, and the Near and Middle East countries, lending
flavor to meats, curries, and marinades, as well as fruit such as apples, pears or rhubarb. Cloves
may be used to give aromatic and flavor qualities to hot beverages, often combined with other
ingredients such as lemon and sugar. They are a common element in spice blends such as pumpkin
pie spice and speculoos spices.
In Mexican cuisine, cloves are best known as clavos de olor, and often
accompany cumin and cinnamon.[2] They are also used in Peruvian cuisine, in a wide variety of
dishes as carapulcra and arroz con leche.
A major component of clove taste is imparted by the chemical eugenol,[3] and the quantity of the
spice required is typically small. It pairs well with cinnamon, allspice, vanilla, red wine and basil, as
well as onion, citrus peel, star anise, or peppercorns.
Non-culinary uses[edit]
The spice is used in a type of cigarette called kretek in Indonesia.[1] Clove cigarettes have been
smoked throughout Europe, Asia and the United States. Starting in 2009, clove cigarettes must be
classified as cigars in the US.[4]
Because of the bioactive chemicals of clove, the spice may be used as an ant repellent.[5]
Cloves used in an orange as a pomander

Cloves can be used to make a fragrance pomander when combined with an orange. When given as
a gift in Victorian England, such a pomander indicated warmth of feeling.
Traditional medicinal uses[edit]
Cloves are used in Indian Ayurvedic medicine, Chinese medicine, and
western herbalism and dentistry where the essential oil is used as an anodyne(painkiller) for dental
emergencies. Cloves are used as a carminative, to increase hydrochloric acid in the stomach and to
improve peristalsis. Cloves are also said to be a natural anthelmintic.[6] The essential oil is used in
aromatherapy when stimulation and warming are needed, especially for digestive problems. Topical
application over the stomach or abdomen are said to warm the digestive tract. Applied to a cavity in
a decayed tooth, it also relieves toothache.[7]
In Chinese medicine, cloves or ding xiang are considered acrid, warm, and aromatic, entering
the kidney, spleen and stomach meridians, and are notable in their ability to warm the middle, direct
stomach qi downward, to treat hiccup and to fortify the kidney yang.[8] Because the herb is so
warming, it is contraindicated in any persons with fire symptoms and according to classical sources
should not be used for anything except cold from yang deficiency. As such, it is used in formulas for
impotence or clear vaginal discharge from yang deficiency, for morning sickness together
with ginseng and patchouli, or for vomiting and diarrhea due to spleen and stomach coldness.[8]

Cloves drying in sun

Potential medicinal uses[edit]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reclassified eugenol (one of the chemicals
contained in clove oil), downgrading its effectiveness rating. The FDA now believes not enough
evidence indicates clove oil or eugenol is effective for toothache pain or a variety of other types of
pain.[9]
Studies to determine its effectiveness for fever reduction, as a mosquito repellent, and to
prevent premature ejaculation have been inconclusive.[9] It remains unproven whether clove may
reduce blood sugar levels.[10]
In addition, clove oil is used in preparation of some toothpastes and Clovacaine solution, which is a
local anesthetic used in oral ulceration and inflammation. Eugenol (or clove oil generally) is mixed
with zinc oxide to form a temporary tooth cavity filling.[11]
Clove oil can be used to anesthetize fish, and prolonged exposure to higher doses (the
recommended dose is 400 mg/l) is considered a humane means of euthanasia.[12]

Adulteration[edit]
Clove stalks are slender stems of the inflorescence axis that show opposite decussate branching.
Externally, they are brownish, rough, and irregularly wrinkled longitudinally with short fracture and
dry, woody texture.
Mother cloves (anthophylli) are the ripe fruits of cloves that are ovoid, brown berries, unilocular
and one-seeded. This can be detected by the presence of much starch in the seeds.
Brown cloves are expanded flowers from which both corollae and stamens have been detached.
Exhausted cloves have most or all the oil removed by distillation. They yield no oil and are darker in
color.[13]

History[edit]
Archeologists have found cloves in a ceramic vessel in Syria, with evidence that dates the find to
within a few years of 1721 BC.[14] In the third century BC, a Chinese leader in the Han
Dynastyrequired those who addressed him to chew cloves to freshen their breath.[15] Cloves were
traded by Muslim sailors and merchants during the Middle Ages in the profitable Indian Ocean trade,
the clove trade is also mentioned by Ibn Battuta and even famous Arabian Nights characters such
as Sinbad the Sailor are known to have bought and sold cloves from India.[16]

Clove output in 2005

Until modern times, cloves grew only on a few islands in the Moluccas (historically called the Spice
Islands), including Bacan, Makian, Moti, Ternate, and Tidore.[14] In fact, the clove tree that experts
believe is the oldest in the world, named Afo, is on Ternate. The tree is between 350 and 400 years
old.[17] Tourists are told that seedlings from this very tree were stolen by a Frenchman named Pierre
Poivre in 1770, transferred to the Isle de France (Mauritius), and then later to Zanzibar, which was
once the world's largest producer of cloves.[17]
Until cloves were grown outside of the Maluku Islands, they were traded like oil, with an enforced
limit on exportation.[17] As the Dutch East India Company consolidated its control of the spice trade in
the 17th century, they sought to gain a monopoly in cloves as they had in nutmeg. However, "unlike
nutmeg and mace, which were limited to the minute Bandas, clove trees grew all over the Moluccas,
and the trade in cloves was way beyond the limited policing powers of the corporation."[18]

Chemical compounds[edit]
The compound eugenol is responsible for most of the characteristic aroma of cloves

Eugenol composes 7290% of the essential oil extracted from cloves and is the compound most
responsible for clove aroma.[3] Other important essential oil constituents of clove oil include acetyl
eugenol, beta-caryophyllene and vanillin, crategolic acid, tannins such as bicornin,[3][19] gallotannic
acid, methyl salicylate (painkiller), the flavonoids eugenin, kaempferol, rhamnetin, and eugenitin,
triterpenoids such as oleanolic acid, stigmasterol, and campesteroland several sesquiterpenes.[20]
Eugenol is toxic in relatively small quantities; for example, a dose of 510 ml has been reported as a
near fatal dose for a two-year-old child.[21]

See also[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has
media related to Clove.

Wikisource has the text of

the 1911 Encyclopdia
Britannica article Cloves.

Cinnamomum cassia
Gallic acid
Insect repellent

References[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b "Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & L. M.
Perry". Germplasm Resources Information
Network (GRIN). Agricultural Research Service(ARS), United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA). Retrieved June 9,2011.
2. Jump up^ Dorenburg, Andrew and Page, Karen. The New American
Chef: Cooking with the Best Flavors and Techniques from Around the
World, John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2003
3. ^ Jump up to:a b c Kamatou GP, Vermaak I, Viljoen AM
(2012). "Eugenol--from the remote Maluku Islands to the international
market place: a review of a remarkable and versatile
molecule". Molecules. 17 (6): 6953
81. doi:10.3390/molecules17066953.
4. Jump up^ "Flavored Tobacco". FDA.gov. Retrieved September
7, 2012.
5. Jump up^ "Get Rid of Ants 24". getridofanst24.
6. Jump up^ Balch, Phyllis and Balch, James. Prescription for Nutritional
Healing, 3rd ed., Avery Publishing, 2000, p. 94
7. Jump up^ Alqareer A, Alyahya A, Andersson L (May 24, 2012). "The
effect of clove and benzocaine versus placebo as topical
 anesthetics". Journal of dentistry. 34 (10): 747
50. PMID 16530911. doi:10.1016/j.jdent.2006.01.009.
8. ^ Jump up to:a b Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica, Third
Edition by Dan Bensky, Steven Clavey, Erich Stoger, and Andrew
Gamble 2004
9. ^ Jump up to:a b "Clove". MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of
Medicine and National Institutes of Health. 2014. Retrieved August
18, 2014.
10. Jump up^ "Clove (Eugenia aromatica) and Clove oil
(Eugenol)". National Institutes of Health, Medicine Plus. nlm.nih.gov.
February 15, 2012. Retrieved September 7, 2012.
11. Jump up^ Youngken, H.W. (1950). Text book of pharmacognosy (6th
ed.).
12. Jump up^ Monks, Neale. "Aquarium Fish Euthanasia: Euthanizing
and disposing of aquarium fish.". FishChannel.com. Retrieved August
1, 2011.
13. Jump up^ Bisset, N.G. (1994). Herbal drugs and
phyotpharmaceuticals, Medpharm. Stuttgart: Scientific Publishers.
14. ^ Jump up to:a b Turner, Jack (2004). Spice: The History of a
Temptation. Vintage Books. pp. xxviixxviii. ISBN 0-375-70705-0.
15. Jump up^ Andaya, Leonard Y. (1993). "1: Cultural State Formation in
Eastern Indonesia". In Reid, Anthony. Southeast Asia in the early
modern era: trade, power, and belief. Cornell University
Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8093-5.
16. Jump up^ "The Third Voyage of Sindbad the Seaman - The Arabian
Nights - The Thousand and One Nights". Translated by Sir Richard
Burton. Classiclit.about.com. April 10, 2012. Retrieved September
7, 2012.
17. ^ Jump up to:a b c Worrall, Simon (June 23, 2012). "The world's oldest
clove tree". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved June 24, 2012.
18. Jump up^ Krondl, Michael. The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall
of the Three Great Cities of Spice. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.
19. Jump up^ Li-Ming Bao, Eerdunbayaer; Akiko Nozaki; Eizo Takahashi;
Keinosuke Okamoto; Hideyuki Ito & Tsutomu Hatano (2012).
"Hydrolysable Tannins Isolated from Syzygium aromaticum: Structure
of a New C-Glucosidic Ellagitannin and Spectral Features of Tannins
with a Tergalloyl Group.". Heterocycles. 85 (2): 365
81. doi:10.3987/COM-11-12392.
20. Jump up^ Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica, Third Edition by
Dan Bensky, Steven Clavey, Erich Stoger, and Andrew Gamble. 2004
21. Jump up^ Hartnoll, G; Moore, D; Douek, D (1993). "Near fatal
ingestion of oil of cloves". Archives of Disease in Childhood. 69 (3):
3923. PMC 1029532 . PMID 8215554. doi:10.1136/adc.69.3.392.

Further reading[edit]
Liu, Bin-Bin; Liu, Luo; Liu, Xiao-Long; Geng, Di; Li, Cheng-Fu; Chen, Shao-Mei; Chen, Xue-Mei; Yi,
Li-Tao; Liu, Qing (February 2015). "Essential Oil of Syzygium aromaticum Reverses the Deficits of
Stress-Induced Behaviors and Hippocampal p-ERK/p-CREB/Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor
Expression". Planta Medica. 81 (3): 185192. PMID 25590367. doi:10.1055/s-0034-1396150.
Retrieved 27 April 2015.

[show]
 Culinary herbs and spices

[show]

TRP channel modulators

Categories:
Syzygium
Spices
Flora of Maluku
Herbs
Plants used in Ayurveda
Plants used in traditional Chinese medicine
Non-timber forest products
Indian spices
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