Cinnamomum micranthum Seeds | Small-flowered Cinnamon

Small-Flowered Cinnamon (Cinnamomum micranthum) with large glossy leaves on a young evergreen tree — Small-Flowered Cinnamon (*Cinnamomum micranthum*): Lauraceae, a great aromatic laurel of southern China.

LATIN NAME: Cinnamomum micranthum

COMMON NAME: Small-Flowered Cinnamon

Plant Profile

The Small-Flowered Cinnamon is a large evergreen tree of the laurel family from the warm, humid forests of southern China, and in old growth it is a genuinely big tree, passing twenty metres with a straight, pale trunk and a deep, rounded crown. The leaves are large, stiff and glossy, strongly three-veined like its commercial relatives, and they carry a clear, spicy-resinous smell when crushed. The flowers that give the species its name are tiny and inconspicuous in loose panicles, and they are followed by dark, ovoid fruits that birds take from the branches as they ripen.

In its native hills it grows with oaks, tearshrubs and other broadleaved evergreens on deep, moist mountain soil, and in cultivation it makes a fast, handsome tree for exactly those conditions. Young growth flushes a bronzy red before hardening.

Science & Biotechnology

The species sits in the Cinnamomum complex alongside the great spice laurels, and systematic work on the group has repeatedly redrawn its internal boundaries, with molecular data clarifying which of the southern Chinese forest laurels belong together and which are separate. Its wood and bark are aromatic in the way of its family, and samples have been included in surveys of the volatile-oil chemistry of Chinese forest lauraceas, though it has never been a commercial spice tree on the scale of cassia. Forestry literature records it as a component species of the subtropical evergreen broadleaved forest, an ecosystem type that has been reduced to fragments across most of its range.

For conservation and for the collector alike, seed-grown stock of this forest tree is scarcer than its garden presence suggests, and each established plant represents a piece of that shrinking forest.

Uses & Benefits

In the warm, frost-free garden it is a superb shade and specimen tree: fast, glossy, aromatic, and tolerant of the deep, moist soils its forest origin implies. The dense crown gives real shade within a decade, the leaf litter makes a rich mulch, and the crushed-leaf scent gives it a sensory presence that most shade trees lack.

Its aromatic bark and leaves have been used regionally as a household spice and scenting material, and related laurels dominate the pharmacognosy literature; this species’ own medicinal record is thin, and its value in cultivation is as a forest tree rather than a drug plant.

Growing from Seed

Sow fresh seed, freed from the fruit pulp, into a deep, free-draining, humus-rich mix and hold it at 22 to 26 °C with even moisture; germination follows within four to six weeks, and the seedlings push a strong early shoot. Shade the young plants from direct sun through their first summer and keep the air humid.

Pot on regularly as the root run deepens, then plant out into rich, moist, free-draining ground in full sun or light shade where winters are frost-free, spacing for the eventual twenty-metre crown. Water through the first two summers, mulch deeply, and stake for three years; after that the tree manages itself.

Our Take

A great glossy laurel of the southern Chinese forests, fast, aromatic and shade-giving. For warm, humid gardens with room, one of the most rewarding large evergreens.

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