Cloves seed Syzygium aromaticum seeds
LATIN NAME: Syzygium aromaticum
COMMON NAME: Clove
Few spices carry the story of the old spice trade like the clove. The handsome, evergreen, conical tree carries the glossy, oval leaves, and the small, fragrant, pinkish-white flowers open in the clusters through the season. The famous cloves are the dried, unopened flower buds, gathered while they are still green and pink and dried to the fine, dark, aromatic nails of the spice trade. The tree is a fine, long-lived, generous addition to the warm, humid, sheltered garden, and it is one of the great spice trees of the world. It is a tree of the warm, rich, well-drained ground.
Scientific Research & Plant Biotechnology
The research record on the clove runs deep, and the tree has been studied for a very long time for the aromatic buds that made it famous. Plant scientists have looked at the fine, fragrant oils of the dried buds, which are rich in the compound that gives the clove its warm, strong character, and the tree keeps showing up in the work on the spice trees of the warm world. The glossy, oval leaves and the fragrant, pinkish-white flowers have also made it a fine garden tree, and the clove remains a regular subject of the studies of the essential oils and the spice crops.
Ecological & Economic Value & Wide Applications
The clove does a lot of work in the kitchen and beyond. The dried buds are one of the great spices of the world, used in the curries, the baked goods, the mulled drinks and the pickles of the warm regions, and the aromatic oil has a long record of use in the dental and the household practice. The handsome, evergreen tree is also a fine, generous shade tree of the warm, humid garden, and the fragrant flowers draw in the bees of the season. It has been written up in the culinary and the botanical papers for the great spice trade and the aromatic buds, and it is a fine, long-lived tree of the warm, sheltered garden.
The clove tree is one of the great spice trees of the warm world, and the small, unopened flower buds are the cloves of the spice trade. The handsome, evergreen tree carries the glossy, oval leaves, and the fragrant, pinkish-white flowers open in the clusters through the season.
To grow the clove tree from seed, sow the fresh seeds in pots of moist, free-draining soil at a shallow depth, covering them lightly, keep them in a warm, humid, sheltered spot and water gently. The seedlings are up within a few weeks and grow on steadily into fine, evergreen young trees. With the warmth, the shelter and the rich, well-drained ground, the fragrant, pinkish-white flowers will be there in a few seasons.
Common Names: Lavanga, Carophyllus, Clovos, Mother Cloves
Cloves are not only a culinary staple, but they should also be in every medicine cabinet as an old-time pain reliever, digestive aid and warming stimulant. Try Cloves as a breath freshener and, perhaps, even an aphrodisiac.
Beneficial Uses:
Cloves are used mainly to support healthy digestive function and is thought to relieve digestive upsets, vomiting and nausea.
Oil of Cloves apparently reduces the sensation of bloating and gas pressure within the stomach that frequently troubles people with peptic ulcers and gastroenteritis. Clove is considered a warming herb that improves the assimilation and digestion of foods.
In Ayurvedic medicine, ancient healers used Cloves to heal respiratory ailments. The herb is said to clear excess mucus from the lungs and relieve asthma, coughs and colds.
Long used as a pain reliever, Clove oil is said to possess powerful analgesic properties. Eugenol, its active ingredient, comprises from sixty- to ninety percent of this herb and is thought to be responsible for its pain-killing properties. Oil of Cloves has been used around the world to relieve pain from toothache and dental treatments and remains one of the major pain relieving agents still used by dentists to ease periodontal disease and toothache. Used externally, Oil of Cloves also eases neuralgia and rheumatism.
Clove oil is considered by some to be one of the most powerful germicidal agents in the herbal kingdom. Its antiseptic, antibacterial properties help in the treatment of food poisoning by killing many types of bacteria, including pseudomonas aeruginosa, shigella (all species), staph and strep – all of which may be involved in food poisoning. Its disinfectant properties make it a fine mouthwash, breath freshener and toothpaste ingredient.
Cloves are said to be antiparasitic, and its antimicrobial properties destroy intestinal parasites, thus supporting its traditional use by the Chinese in treating diarrhea and intestinal worms.
Reputed to have antiviral and antifungal properties, Clove oil is said to increase the efficacy of "acyclovir," a drug used to treat the viral infections underlying Bell's palsy, chronic fatigue syndrome and herpes. It is also thought to be beneficial in counteracting the fungus that causes athlete's foot.
Consuming Cloves is thought to produce an aphrodisiac effect.
Contraindications:
Clove oil is not recommended for pregnant or nursing women or for children. People over sixty-five years of age should start with lower doses and then increase. Until further research is completed, anyone with a history of cancer should not use therapeutic amounts of Clove. Clove oil is very strong and may cause irritation if used in its pure form.