Pimenta dioica Seeds | Allspice
LATIN NAME: Pimenta dioica
COMMON NAME: Allspice
Plant Profile
Allspice is the dried unripe berry of Pimenta dioica, an evergreen tree of the myrtle family that grows ten to eighteen metres tall in the limestone hills of Jamaica, southern Mexico and Central America. The leaves are leathery and aromatic, the flowers small and white in panicles, and the bark is smooth and pale grey.
The name is a marketing accident: the berry tastes of clove, cinnamon and nutmeg at once, so English traders called it all spice. Jamaica remains the main source, and the best berries are picked green in late summer and dried in the sun until they turn a deep reddish brown and rattle when shaken.
Science & Biotechnology
The aroma is dominated by eugenol, which makes up sixty to eighty per cent of the berry oil, with myrcene and 1,8-cineole filling out the rest. Leaf oil is even richer in eugenol and is used commercially as a clove substitute, which is why the two oils are so often confused in cheaper spice blends.
The tree is dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants, so a lone specimen will flower for decades and never fruit. That single fact explains why allspice is grown almost entirely within its native range: outside the tropics the tree may survive but rarely sets a crop, and hand pollination is not practical at orchard scale. Dried berries are graded by size and by the amount of volatile oil they retain, and a handful crushed in the palm should smell sharply of clove before any other note appears.
Uses & Benefits
Whole berries go into pickling spice, jerk seasoning, sausage and stew, and they are ground for baking. The flavour fades quickly once ground, so the berries are best bought whole and crushed as needed. Two or three berries are enough for a pot of stew.
The leaf is used as a bay-like herb in Caribbean cooking, and the wood is smoked for jerk. Medicinally, eugenol is the reason for both the traditional use as a topical numbing agent and the main caution: the oil is irritating to skin and mucous membranes and should never be taken undiluted.
Growing from Seed
Seed loses viability within weeks and should be sown fresh, in a warm, shaded bed at 25 to 30°C. Germination is slow and uneven, often taking two to three months, and the seedlings are tender for their first year.
Plants need a frost-free climate, high rainfall and limestone-derived soil, and they resent waterlogging. Because of the dioecious habit, a fruiting garden needs at least one male for every eight or ten females. Trees begin to crop at five to seven years and can be harvested twice a season in good conditions. Berries are picked when they are full-sized but still green, since a ripe berry dries to a pale, hollow shell.
Our Take
A warm-climate tree that gives one of the few spices worth growing at home, provided you have the space, the heat and a male plant somewhere nearby.
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