In upstate New York, there's a tree that smells like buttered bread. I'd have 1000% put that on my food if I was starving.
Edit: even deer eat tree bark when they're super hungry
Eating the bark of a Ponderosa Pine is not advisable. While the bark itself may not be highly toxic, it contains compounds that can be harmful, particularly to livestock like cattle, where ingestion of needles, bark, or buds has been linked to issues like abortion in cows. For humans, consuming the bark can lead to stomach discomfort or more serious health issues due to the resin and other compounds present.
The Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) smells like shortbread cookies (or some people say caramel) when it loses it's leaves in the fall. Beautiful trees that also have some of the best yellow fall color.
The tree you're referring to is likely the Ponderosa Pine. Its bark has a distinctive scent that many people compare to the smell of buttered popcorn or butterscotch. Ponderosa Pines are not native to New York State but can be found in some arboretums and parks.
I went to school at UC Irvine and I also worked in Augusta, Georgia for a while. Not sure if it’s the same tree, but the smell from the cum trees in Georgia were orders of magnitude more horrendous. They smelled like dead fish that had been fucked to death.
Bradford Pear. It's an awful tree that was exceedingly popular with developers for 20 years or so. It is shallow rooted, exceedingly fragile and prone to limbs breaking, and the flowers do smell terrible. But it's pretty, and inexpensive, so developers put it everywhere.
I hate these trees so much. I grew up in a suburb that exploded in the early 2000s so every single subdivision is lined with these trees. My least favorite thing about them, besides the jizz smell, is that they don’t grow very large, and keep the appearance of a young tree. This completely sucks the charm out of those neighborhood subdivisions. I think neighborhoods age more gracefully when the trees that line the streets grow large to reach across the road, shading and framing the houses and yards. Instead we get these trees that keep the appearances of saplings which make the neighborhoods of yesteryear look dated and soulless
Yup, the one I always wonder about is who was the first person to discover that shark liver oil was good for soothing hemorrhoids & what the F did they thing they were doing.
Exactly. People focus on what worked in history but neglect to pay attention to everything that didn’t. Hell, people literally *ate* petroleum jelly (Vaseline) for years (including its “inventor”) until finally most realized it’s pretty much only good as a skin protectant. Every age of discovery and invention from the introduction of electricity to the internet has its successes and a wake of failures.
A lot of different people in the world have figured out that spider webs are good for healing wounds. They don't know it's because they contain natural antibiotics, but they somehow figured out it works. I think it's fun to imagine all the weird shit they tried before that though.
I always like to imagine like an aztec doctor out in the jungle stuffing some warrior's wound full of maize going *"Does it feel better? Worse? Same?"* and the warrior, unsure but wanting to stay positive replying *"I don't know, kinda a little bit better maybe."* to which the doctor happily nods in agreement.
I bet, based on nothing but baseless speculation, that this was invented by a "healer" desperately trying to convince some Chief or King with hemorrhoids not to execute him.
It's freaking fantastic on bruises too. I used to use it all the time when doing downhill mountain biking (which involved more downhill than mountain biking most of the time).
Coming over to Australia I went to the pharmacy to get it, and they asked why I wanted makeup remover!!
If you have some, and you get a bruise site coming up, get some on a cotton pad and tape it over. It takes out the swelling amazingly well.
Basically the whole history of human culinary culture can be summarized as three things:
1. How do I get this shit to stay edible for longer
2. That's still good we can still eat that
3. Damn I'm so hungry I'm gonna try eating this thing
Another one or two maybe?
4. If I add these things together what happens?
5. If I add sugar and/or water to this thing and leave it a few months am I still able to see after I drink it?
Nah, that last one almost certainly falls under "I wonder if this is still edible", and almost certainly referred to bread that got left out in the rain and then forgotten for a week.
It's always a fun thought process to actually try to figure out some of these. For cinnamon, I imagine it went something like:
1. People burning stuff
2. This wood smells extra good. Burn it for fun.
3. It's actually the bark that burns so nice. Save that for rituals.
4. Surely the ritual bark has healing properties. Let's soak it in alcohol and extract the goodness.
5. Wow this cinnamon extract has an interesting flavor. Let's experiment with maximizing the flavor.
There's lots of things like this, and the element folks often forget is time. No single person figured out cinnamon bark could be stripped this way and dried for a spice. Over thousands of years, people came to know things because one time someone accidentally dropped it in water or left it out overnight.
If we look at a bigger perspective it’s weirder to *not* investigate if something’s edible. We just don’t have that natural drive anymore because are needs are always met by other means than scavenging.
Cinnamon tree leaves are fragrant and you can smell the tree when you're standing next to it. Someone chewed on some leaves and found that they're sweet too. Ok tree, what else you got? The barks are sweet too? No shit.
I'm more concerned about people discovering tea. Not fragrant and bitter too. Bitter = poison (in most cases). Some dude in China thought Imma commit suicide by eating these leaves. A few minutes later they found him refreshed and back to work.
I do believe that the story goes, a Chinese emperor was sitting outside in a garden and had for some odd reason they pot of hot water near him and some leaves accidentally blew into his cup and it started smelling nice so he drank it. Thus tea was born
This is a good legend from China...
A Buddha fell asleep and was so cross with himself he cut off his eyelids and threw them on to the ground. They grew into the first tea bush.
I really want to know how we first got from sugar cane to processed sugar because there are so many steps and they're all actually quite intensive even today. I get why molasses was used for so long, it's incredibly easy to get in comparison.
https://www.primalsurvivor.net/can-you-eat-tree-bark/
Article lists 11 different trees with edible bark that were historically eaten by various cultures.
My guess would be that humans have tried pretty much all the tree barks, and found only a few of them to be edible. Famine used to be a pretty common thing. Get hungry enough you start experimenting...
Yeah this essentially kills the tree. The other part of the tree is actually the living part. Once that's disconnected tho the base like this the tree is dead.
This isn't exactly true, at least for cinnamon trees.
Yes, removing the bark deprives the tree of water and nutrients, and so the tree must be cut down once its bark has been harvested, but cinnamon trees survive being cut down and regrow quickly from the roots, provided they remain undisturbed and covered with soil. The climate they grow in provides ample water and strong sunlight year-round, and so harvested trees can regrow and be ready for harvesting again in only a few years.
Edit: lol, why the downvote?? This is literally how cinnamon is harvested as a crop. The bark is removed, the tree cut down leaving very little stump, the stump is covered with soil, and within a few years they can harvest again. It regrows all on its own from the mature roots which are still alive.
Anyone reading this, don't take someone correcting you as an attack. People who live like that go their whole lives never learning anything, and their heads are filled with untrue assumptions they refuse to be corrected on.
I can attest to your point. I cut down a tree (not cinnamon) so almost no stump was left. It sent out saplings in a circle around the stump within a year.
Not seedlings either, as the saplings sprouted from the visible surface roots.
If they are regularly chopping down the wood anyway, and I don't see a lot of things constructed from cinnamon wood, is it safe to say that it's not all that great to build things with?
From [here](https://permies.com/t/113165/Cinnamon-wood) it looks like the branches/trunks after harvest are too thin to make much out of, especially on an industrial scale.
"Great bins of melange lay all around in a gigantic room cut from native rock and illuminated by glowglobes ... The spice had glowed radiant blue in the dim silver light. And the smell—bitter cinnamon, unmistakable"
They just made it red in all the movies.The water of life is blue and the reason it turns their eyes blue...Though there are some inconsistencies in the books, I think it makes the most sense for it to be blue.
I did some research and the author didn’t give any clear answers.
There are some reddit threads about it.
I think it would be stupid if spice was blue dust inside the normal coloured desert.
But refined versions are probably blue.
Yeah there was one about it being reddish brown, another where the gas chambers of the navigators is an orangish, then that one I just listed with it being blue.
I had always imagined it being blue, mostly due to the eyes thing.
If it was northern Thailand it was probably cassia not cinnamon. Cinnamon has a pretty mild taste and the vast majority of which is grown in Sri Lanka.
Interesting, the villager showing us around Mae Kampong said it was Cinnamon as if there wasn't a distinction. Wonder if that's a specific to country, whether it's defined. Or just lost in translation.
Was super potent, pretty fun to chew on while walking around the jungle village, looking at an old medicine man's garden of herbal remedies.
Wondering this myself since the phloem or the layer between the wood and the bark is the only truly living part of a tree. It serves as the circulatory system from leaf to root and I always understood that severing it completely meant the death of the tree.
Yeah there's no way it survived once the full ring is cut. I'm sure there's a documentary about monoculture forests that are just these and nothing else, planted and killed in decade cycles or whatever.
There are various methods to harvesting, I’m not sure how they continue this particular one but in other ways the tree gets cut down to the root to regrow. It’s pretty incredible. Others just let the bark regrow in a few months.
>Others just let the bark regrow in a few months.
Trees generally cannot regrow bark once it is stripped like this.
Or are cinnamon trees special in this regard?
I think these trees can be cut down to just above ground level and regrow from the trunk. It grows really fast since it maintains a healthy root system.
They're after the naked tree you're looking at, the bark gets discarded. He's another Asian Reddit post from a couple years back
https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/u225sk/how_cinnamon_is_harvested_outer_bark_is_peeled/
ETA, this is considered sustainable harvesting because they grow and mature relatively quick.
This part of the tree is 100% dead now. The actual living part of a tree is basically just a thin layer between the trunk and the bark. It is possible in some trees to harvest the out bark while leaving the inner living layer in tact (cork trees are the best example of this) but in this case they are removing the entire living layer.
It is possible that they are intending to cut the tree off at the trunk, leaving enough living tissue at the base for the tree to regrow from the same root system.
Fortunately cinnamon trees grow rapidly and will be back to this size in around 10 Years
To anyone wondering how long it actually takes;
A cinnamon tree will take roughly 7-10 years to grow fully and produce cinnamon bark. The time depends on climate and other factors, but you would expect to wait at least 7 years before harvesting.
I wouldn't say its "really fast", unless you're comparing to regular trees which can take upwards of multiple decades to fully mature.
I should have said compared to many other trees. Such as a tree grown for lumber where I live, takes about 30 years for a yellow pine to be ready to harvest
Several types of trees, in fact. Judging by the thickness of this bark, I'd guess this to be *cinnamomum burmanni*, which is an Indonesian variety, and the most common type you'll find as cinnamon sticks in the US. Basically the whole process for this type is just to strip the bark, cut it into strips, and leave it to dry. During the drying process the strips curl into the iconic cinnamon stick shape.
The inner layer of bark is the living part of the tree. Removing bark all the way around the trunk kills the tree. They will cut this one down to harvest the rest of it.
Cinnamon trees for harvesting are grown for ten years.
Different person here. I found [this](https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/cinnamon-wood-finally-got-it.320736/) thread where I get the sense that cinnamon wood is mostly used locally, rather than shipped around the world like the bark, as firewood or for building small things (not, like, houses). You can chase down the paper that they're talking about if you don't trust a random forum post.
Almost identical to harvesting cork. Only, with cork trees, when you harvest the bark all the way around like this, they survive and can be harvested in another nine years.
The difference here is that the desired product is the _inner_ bark of the tree. Harvesting cinnamon kills the trunk (which will be cut off at ground level), but a new one will regrow in a few years to be harvested again in a rotating fashion.
With cork, the desired product is the _outer_ bark. When harvested, they are careful not to cut too deep and damage the inner layer which is the living tissue of the tree. Cork trees can be repeatedly harvested every few years for centuries.
The interesting thing about cork trees is that they evolved to survive in areas that had frequent wildfires. The outer bark could burn away, but its insulative properties prevents the heat from damaging the living tissue. It may lose all it's leaves and many of its branches, but the trunk will survive and grow new branches.
This is probably the wimpiest I ever get but I always feel bad for the cinnamon tree. Poor thing gets its skin flayed then is left alive only to be flayed again. Have to remind myself that it's just a tree and I'm being stupid.
They do, the smell that is released when you cut grass [is a warning to other plants that they are under attack.](https://scienceillustrated.com.au/blog/ask-us/the-smell-of-fresh-cut-grass-is-an-attack-warning/)
> Green Leaf Volatiles (GLVs) are a group of volatile organic compounds based on six carbon atoms. Almost all green plants are able to release them, and they typically do so in great quantities when they are attacked or damaged. So the volatiles are actually ‘cries of horror’ from the cut grass which are received by other plants and animals. A study of corn demonstrated that the plants release GLVs when predators chewed on them. The GLVs made other corn plants produce substances which make them less tasty, preparing for an attack.
It’s not the good kind of cinnamon though.
There are 2 kind, cassia and Ceylon.
This here is cassia, is thicker and has lads aromas.
Because of the thickness it’s easier to harvest because you’ll need less of the bark.
This cassia is also known to give people higher blood pressure among other effects.
Ceylon is very thin and you’ll need a lot more to make one stick as that one has multiple layers on on cinnamon stick. They’re also a lot more brittle.
The good kind of cinnamon will crack very easily
Supermarkets and run of the mill grocery stores almost always only stock/sell cassia. AFAIK you can only get Ceylon in a health food store.
Similarly, if you get cinnamon in a restaurant it's almost certainly cassia.
Essentially cassia is cheap, tastes like real cinnamon, and has virtually no health benefits.
Most grocery stores sell cassia only - it's much cheaper than the real cinnamon and it has a less subtle, more intensive taste - good for baking, etc. Probably the only way to tell them apart in the ground form is to read the label - Ceylon cinnamon will be labeled as such, or maybe real cinnamon, true cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum. The place of origin will probably be Sri Lanka (though some other places grow it as well). If it doesn't say that, assume it's cassia.
It's easy to tell apart the cinnamon sticks, however: Ceylon cinnamon sticks look like cigars, rolled up with many fine, thin layers. Cassia will be much thicker, one layer only, may have curled edges.
Did you know that Vicks vapor rub comes from the roots of the cinnamon tree. If you dig them up they smell exactly like it. Was very cool finding that out when I did a tour of a cinnamon farm in Africa.
This is cassia cinnamon grown in Indonesia. The original cinnamon is ceylon cinnamon from sri lanka and it comes from a much smaller plant. Its basically as wide as a finger. Since the demand for cinnamon was much larger than the supply of ceylon they started harvesting and selling cassia which can also survive the debarking process and provide a lot more yield. Still the ceylon cinnamon has a much more stronger flavour thats distinctly better than the cassia
Cinnamon trees don't die after harvest because they grow back quickly. The trees are cultivated for two or three years, then cut down at the base in a process called coppicing. In commercial operations, the entire tree is cut down to a bit above ground level, and the bark from the whole trunk is harvested. The stump will regenerate and an even fuller tree will grow within a few years.
Imagine being a tree, having cinnamon bark to attract certain animals, and deter others.
Then some fucking humans come along and flay you alive because cinnamon sticks are great in soups.
Cinnamon trees are surprisingly very good at adapting, it’ll be fine. One method of harvesting involves letting the trees grow for two or three years, and then are cut down at the base in a process called “coppicing.” The bark is then harvested, separated, and dried. The tree will return again next year, with over a dozen new shoots emerging from the cut stalk which is usually done right above ground level
Little edit: if they don’t cut the tree it can still regrow its bark in around 3 months. There are multiple ways to harvest.
I mean if you're not gonna eat plants that are grown from seed and then either plucked, its offspring harvested, skin flayed or more usually just wholesale ripped out and killed during harvesting, it's really not gonna leave you with many food options.
There is more than one kind of cinnamon.
Ceylon and cassia Ceylon is true cinnamon.
Cassia is the most common type.
Apparently there is more types than just that and they all taste a bit different.
[удалено]
I want to know who the first human to think “hmm let’s peel this tree and consume it” was.
In upstate New York, there's a tree that smells like buttered bread. I'd have 1000% put that on my food if I was starving. Edit: even deer eat tree bark when they're super hungry
What kind of tree smells like buttered bread?
I love that they threw a random edit about deer eating bark and not one about the type of tree that smells like buttered bread
My guess is Cassia. They smell like buttered popcorn.
but is it poisonous?
try it and let us know
I will try it, but only once.
Yeah bro, try it. Then let us know. If you don’t reply back then we’ll know it’s poison and I will avoid it :)
Eating the bark of a Ponderosa Pine is not advisable. While the bark itself may not be highly toxic, it contains compounds that can be harmful, particularly to livestock like cattle, where ingestion of needles, bark, or buds has been linked to issues like abortion in cows. For humans, consuming the bark can lead to stomach discomfort or more serious health issues due to the resin and other compounds present.
That was non-specific enough to be truly terrifying.
Iim still waiting for the name of the buttered bread tree
Lol, that edit was within a minute of posting. I don't know the name of the tree.
The Katsura tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) smells like shortbread cookies (or some people say caramel) when it loses it's leaves in the fall. Beautiful trees that also have some of the best yellow fall color.
I wonder if these trees can be found in Michigan
They are hardy to zone 4 so you could grow them in most parts of Michigan. Check your local arboretum or you could plant one yourself
The tree you're referring to is likely the Ponderosa Pine. Its bark has a distinctive scent that many people compare to the smell of buttered popcorn or butterscotch. Ponderosa Pines are not native to New York State but can be found in some arboretums and parks.
the one i stuck buttered bread to
> smells like buttered bread On west coast we have cum trees.
Yup, the UC Irvine campus has them
I went to school at UC Irvine and I also worked in Augusta, Georgia for a while. Not sure if it’s the same tree, but the smell from the cum trees in Georgia were orders of magnitude more horrendous. They smelled like dead fish that had been fucked to death.
Pardon
Bradford Pear. It's an awful tree that was exceedingly popular with developers for 20 years or so. It is shallow rooted, exceedingly fragile and prone to limbs breaking, and the flowers do smell terrible. But it's pretty, and inexpensive, so developers put it everywhere.
I hate these trees so much. I grew up in a suburb that exploded in the early 2000s so every single subdivision is lined with these trees. My least favorite thing about them, besides the jizz smell, is that they don’t grow very large, and keep the appearance of a young tree. This completely sucks the charm out of those neighborhood subdivisions. I think neighborhoods age more gracefully when the trees that line the streets grow large to reach across the road, shading and framing the houses and yards. Instead we get these trees that keep the appearances of saplings which make the neighborhoods of yesteryear look dated and soulless
I know it sounds like a joke but the Bradford Pear tree is an ornamental tree and it’s blossoms are described as smelling like semen
Imagine being Bradford and your legacy left upon this world is simply "the cum tree guy" lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoqlYGuZGVM
Yup, the one I always wonder about is who was the first person to discover that shark liver oil was good for soothing hemorrhoids & what the F did they thing they were doing.
Just imagine how many other things they had already tried putting up their butt before that, as they worked their way down the list.
- Sea Cucumber ❌ - Shale oil ❌ - Shake-n-vac ❌
Username checks out!
Exactly. People focus on what worked in history but neglect to pay attention to everything that didn’t. Hell, people literally *ate* petroleum jelly (Vaseline) for years (including its “inventor”) until finally most realized it’s pretty much only good as a skin protectant. Every age of discovery and invention from the introduction of electricity to the internet has its successes and a wake of failures.
A lot of different people in the world have figured out that spider webs are good for healing wounds. They don't know it's because they contain natural antibiotics, but they somehow figured out it works. I think it's fun to imagine all the weird shit they tried before that though. I always like to imagine like an aztec doctor out in the jungle stuffing some warrior's wound full of maize going *"Does it feel better? Worse? Same?"* and the warrior, unsure but wanting to stay positive replying *"I don't know, kinda a little bit better maybe."* to which the doctor happily nods in agreement.
I bet, based on nothing but baseless speculation, that this was invented by a "healer" desperately trying to convince some Chief or King with hemorrhoids not to execute him.
[удалено]
It's freaking fantastic on bruises too. I used to use it all the time when doing downhill mountain biking (which involved more downhill than mountain biking most of the time). Coming over to Australia I went to the pharmacy to get it, and they asked why I wanted makeup remover!! If you have some, and you get a bruise site coming up, get some on a cotton pad and tape it over. It takes out the swelling amazingly well.
Or shit like Ayahuasca (spelling?) Im almost certain its two poisonous plants mixed together and then cooked to make you trip
Basically the whole history of human culinary culture can be summarized as three things: 1. How do I get this shit to stay edible for longer 2. That's still good we can still eat that 3. Damn I'm so hungry I'm gonna try eating this thing
Another one or two maybe? 4. If I add these things together what happens? 5. If I add sugar and/or water to this thing and leave it a few months am I still able to see after I drink it?
Nah, that last one almost certainly falls under "I wonder if this is still edible", and almost certainly referred to bread that got left out in the rain and then forgotten for a week.
It's always a fun thought process to actually try to figure out some of these. For cinnamon, I imagine it went something like: 1. People burning stuff 2. This wood smells extra good. Burn it for fun. 3. It's actually the bark that burns so nice. Save that for rituals. 4. Surely the ritual bark has healing properties. Let's soak it in alcohol and extract the goodness. 5. Wow this cinnamon extract has an interesting flavor. Let's experiment with maximizing the flavor. There's lots of things like this, and the element folks often forget is time. No single person figured out cinnamon bark could be stripped this way and dried for a spice. Over thousands of years, people came to know things because one time someone accidentally dropped it in water or left it out overnight.
you ever seen how cocaine is made? all these discoveries are insane
I completely agree . I also want to know what brave human decided to one day eat the choke of the artichoke. That's a lot of work.
If we look at a bigger perspective it’s weirder to *not* investigate if something’s edible. We just don’t have that natural drive anymore because are needs are always met by other means than scavenging.
Things like this was almost always discovered after watching an animal eating it.
I think that about milk and cheese. And now trees.
[удалено]
I mean, it's not exactly rocket surgery to notice what human babies do and think, "Could I get that from something that won't slap me?"
Your mom.
What about the first human to eat mount oysters?
Cinnamon tree leaves are fragrant and you can smell the tree when you're standing next to it. Someone chewed on some leaves and found that they're sweet too. Ok tree, what else you got? The barks are sweet too? No shit. I'm more concerned about people discovering tea. Not fragrant and bitter too. Bitter = poison (in most cases). Some dude in China thought Imma commit suicide by eating these leaves. A few minutes later they found him refreshed and back to work.
I do believe that the story goes, a Chinese emperor was sitting outside in a garden and had for some odd reason they pot of hot water near him and some leaves accidentally blew into his cup and it started smelling nice so he drank it. Thus tea was born
Yeah I'm sure it was an emperor.
only mf around sitting around doing fuck all around then i imagine, i have done stranger things with less free time.
Definitely sounds like a story an emperor would tell. "I invented tea, and it was by peaceful happenstance."
This is a good legend from China... A Buddha fell asleep and was so cross with himself he cut off his eyelids and threw them on to the ground. They grew into the first tea bush.
People used to have a lot more time and hunger to work with.
I picture a group of caveman. Ooh, this plant very tasty! Ooh, this one get me high as fuck! Where gronk? Gronk die. Poor gronk.
/r/fourthworldproblems
I really want to know how we first got from sugar cane to processed sugar because there are so many steps and they're all actually quite intensive even today. I get why molasses was used for so long, it's incredibly easy to get in comparison.
Makes you wonder if we’ve tried all the different tree barks.
Hunger will make you do crazy things.
The answer is starvation and attempting not to starve
n i wonder if we ever got around to trying other trees?
https://www.primalsurvivor.net/can-you-eat-tree-bark/ Article lists 11 different trees with edible bark that were historically eaten by various cultures. My guess would be that humans have tried pretty much all the tree barks, and found only a few of them to be edible. Famine used to be a pretty common thing. Get hungry enough you start experimenting...
People didn’t have Internet back then…
A naked tree has few secrets. A flayed tree, none
I am in so much pain 🌳
Yeah this essentially kills the tree. The other part of the tree is actually the living part. Once that's disconnected tho the base like this the tree is dead.
This isn't exactly true, at least for cinnamon trees. Yes, removing the bark deprives the tree of water and nutrients, and so the tree must be cut down once its bark has been harvested, but cinnamon trees survive being cut down and regrow quickly from the roots, provided they remain undisturbed and covered with soil. The climate they grow in provides ample water and strong sunlight year-round, and so harvested trees can regrow and be ready for harvesting again in only a few years. Edit: lol, why the downvote?? This is literally how cinnamon is harvested as a crop. The bark is removed, the tree cut down leaving very little stump, the stump is covered with soil, and within a few years they can harvest again. It regrows all on its own from the mature roots which are still alive. Anyone reading this, don't take someone correcting you as an attack. People who live like that go their whole lives never learning anything, and their heads are filled with untrue assumptions they refuse to be corrected on.
Coppicing: this method has been used for thousands of years with willow, hazel, chestnut etc, for making rods and poles or animal forage.
A tree with a Reddit account is down voting you
His bark is worse than his bite.
Not in this case. His bark is delicious.
Thank you for your informative reply. I dove into the comments hoping to answer this question.
I can attest to your point. I cut down a tree (not cinnamon) so almost no stump was left. It sent out saplings in a circle around the stump within a year. Not seedlings either, as the saplings sprouted from the visible surface roots.
If they are regularly chopping down the wood anyway, and I don't see a lot of things constructed from cinnamon wood, is it safe to say that it's not all that great to build things with?
From [here](https://permies.com/t/113165/Cinnamon-wood) it looks like the branches/trunks after harvest are too thin to make much out of, especially on an industrial scale.
Easy there, Roose.
[удалено]
Imagine the smell :)
I imagine it would be the smell of Arrakis from Dune
He who controls the Cinnamon, controls the IHOP-verse
Lisan-al-Gaib?
Lisan-al-Gaib!
Lisan-al-Gaib!
LisAAAAaalll-Al-GaIIIIBBB!!!
But it's not blue.
Spice isn’t blue
"Great bins of melange lay all around in a gigantic room cut from native rock and illuminated by glowglobes ... The spice had glowed radiant blue in the dim silver light. And the smell—bitter cinnamon, unmistakable" They just made it red in all the movies.The water of life is blue and the reason it turns their eyes blue...Though there are some inconsistencies in the books, I think it makes the most sense for it to be blue.
I did some research and the author didn’t give any clear answers. There are some reddit threads about it. I think it would be stupid if spice was blue dust inside the normal coloured desert. But refined versions are probably blue.
Yeah there was one about it being reddish brown, another where the gas chambers of the navigators is an orangish, then that one I just listed with it being blue. I had always imagined it being blue, mostly due to the eyes thing.
I got to see and smell some cinnamon trees once, and it was magical! The best smelling cinnamon to ever bless my nostrils
Got to chew on this in Northern Thailand, easily 10x more potent than Cinnamon candy.
If it was northern Thailand it was probably cassia not cinnamon. Cinnamon has a pretty mild taste and the vast majority of which is grown in Sri Lanka.
Interesting, the villager showing us around Mae Kampong said it was Cinnamon as if there wasn't a distinction. Wonder if that's a specific to country, whether it's defined. Or just lost in translation. Was super potent, pretty fun to chew on while walking around the jungle village, looking at an old medicine man's garden of herbal remedies.
https://i.imgur.com/glM3HKn.gif
What happens to the tree? Can it survive without the bark?
Wondering this myself since the phloem or the layer between the wood and the bark is the only truly living part of a tree. It serves as the circulatory system from leaf to root and I always understood that severing it completely meant the death of the tree.
Yeah there's no way it survived once the full ring is cut. I'm sure there's a documentary about monoculture forests that are just these and nothing else, planted and killed in decade cycles or whatever.
There are various methods to harvesting, I’m not sure how they continue this particular one but in other ways the tree gets cut down to the root to regrow. It’s pretty incredible. Others just let the bark regrow in a few months.
>Others just let the bark regrow in a few months. Trees generally cannot regrow bark once it is stripped like this. Or are cinnamon trees special in this regard?
Cork oaks regrow their bark but it takes years
If you remove a ring of bark, it kills the tree. These are grown for ten years, harvested, and new trees are planted to replace them.
I think these trees can be cut down to just above ground level and regrow from the trunk. It grows really fast since it maintains a healthy root system.
Could be. I suspect small farms might prefer that where possible.
Why not just cut strips then so the tree survives?
Heavy scarring slows a tree’s growth. It is more efficient, on an agricultural scale, to completely replace the tree every ten years.
probably less efficient.
They're after the naked tree you're looking at, the bark gets discarded. He's another Asian Reddit post from a couple years back https://www.reddit.com/r/educationalgifs/comments/u225sk/how_cinnamon_is_harvested_outer_bark_is_peeled/ ETA, this is considered sustainable harvesting because they grow and mature relatively quick.
Same thought, but it's amazing!
This part of the tree is 100% dead now. The actual living part of a tree is basically just a thin layer between the trunk and the bark. It is possible in some trees to harvest the out bark while leaving the inner living layer in tact (cork trees are the best example of this) but in this case they are removing the entire living layer. It is possible that they are intending to cut the tree off at the trunk, leaving enough living tissue at the base for the tree to regrow from the same root system. Fortunately cinnamon trees grow rapidly and will be back to this size in around 10 Years
The smooth tree without bark is … pleasant
^mmmm ^smooth
dead
[удалено]
Cinnamon trees grow really fast, so it's not really a big deal. They cut it down to above the roots and it grows back pretty quickly.
To anyone wondering how long it actually takes; A cinnamon tree will take roughly 7-10 years to grow fully and produce cinnamon bark. The time depends on climate and other factors, but you would expect to wait at least 7 years before harvesting. I wouldn't say its "really fast", unless you're comparing to regular trees which can take upwards of multiple decades to fully mature.
I should have said compared to many other trees. Such as a tree grown for lumber where I live, takes about 30 years for a yellow pine to be ready to harvest
It's a shame but their species will never goes extinct as long as we are around so that's a plus for long term survival I guess
*Dolphin Smooth*
Yeah and dead, since the bark is where the live part of the tree is.
TIL cinnamon comes from a TREE?!? I also need to see the rest of the process, "How It's Made" style.
Several types of trees, in fact. Judging by the thickness of this bark, I'd guess this to be *cinnamomum burmanni*, which is an Indonesian variety, and the most common type you'll find as cinnamon sticks in the US. Basically the whole process for this type is just to strip the bark, cut it into strips, and leave it to dry. During the drying process the strips curl into the iconic cinnamon stick shape.
Thank you, Science Side of Reddit!
How long does it take for the bark to grow back?
The inner layer of bark is the living part of the tree. Removing bark all the way around the trunk kills the tree. They will cut this one down to harvest the rest of it. Cinnamon trees for harvesting are grown for ten years.
Is it harvested as wood for traditional wood purposes? Are there desks and cabinets made of cinnamon?
Yeah, but it looks like it is more often used as cooking fuel, or for smoking foods.
Different person here. I found [this](https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/threads/cinnamon-wood-finally-got-it.320736/) thread where I get the sense that cinnamon wood is mostly used locally, rather than shipped around the world like the bark, as firewood or for building small things (not, like, houses). You can chase down the paper that they're talking about if you don't trust a random forum post.
Cinnamon only comes from one tree, cinnamomum verum. Anything else is cassia.
😮
Thats pretty much it, cinnamon sticks are little curls of bark.
In my language it is literally called "tree peel"
Almost identical to harvesting cork. Only, with cork trees, when you harvest the bark all the way around like this, they survive and can be harvested in another nine years.
The difference here is that the desired product is the _inner_ bark of the tree. Harvesting cinnamon kills the trunk (which will be cut off at ground level), but a new one will regrow in a few years to be harvested again in a rotating fashion. With cork, the desired product is the _outer_ bark. When harvested, they are careful not to cut too deep and damage the inner layer which is the living tissue of the tree. Cork trees can be repeatedly harvested every few years for centuries. The interesting thing about cork trees is that they evolved to survive in areas that had frequent wildfires. The outer bark could burn away, but its insulative properties prevents the heat from damaging the living tissue. It may lose all it's leaves and many of its branches, but the trunk will survive and grow new branches.
This is cassia, a slightly different version of what is called true cinnamon (ceylon cinnamon; ceylon means Srilanka)
Circumcised him
This is probably the wimpiest I ever get but I always feel bad for the cinnamon tree. Poor thing gets its skin flayed then is left alive only to be flayed again. Have to remind myself that it's just a tree and I'm being stupid.
Oh the tree doesn't get left alive to be flayed again, from other comments here they cut it down after harvesting since the bark doesn't grow back.
I have a momentary pang of guilt when I turn off the lights in a room that my floor robot is cleaning. It’s ok, the world has enough callous a-holes.
Maybe trees do scream and feel pain, just in ways that we can’t hear or comprehend!
They do, the smell that is released when you cut grass [is a warning to other plants that they are under attack.](https://scienceillustrated.com.au/blog/ask-us/the-smell-of-fresh-cut-grass-is-an-attack-warning/) > Green Leaf Volatiles (GLVs) are a group of volatile organic compounds based on six carbon atoms. Almost all green plants are able to release them, and they typically do so in great quantities when they are attacked or damaged. So the volatiles are actually ‘cries of horror’ from the cut grass which are received by other plants and animals. A study of corn demonstrated that the plants release GLVs when predators chewed on them. The GLVs made other corn plants produce substances which make them less tasty, preparing for an attack.
Don't worry kids, it'll grow back.
It’s not the good kind of cinnamon though. There are 2 kind, cassia and Ceylon. This here is cassia, is thicker and has lads aromas. Because of the thickness it’s easier to harvest because you’ll need less of the bark. This cassia is also known to give people higher blood pressure among other effects. Ceylon is very thin and you’ll need a lot more to make one stick as that one has multiple layers on on cinnamon stick. They’re also a lot more brittle. The good kind of cinnamon will crack very easily
Any way to tell them apart while grocery shopping?
It will specifically be labeled as Ceylon cinnamon.
Supermarkets and run of the mill grocery stores almost always only stock/sell cassia. AFAIK you can only get Ceylon in a health food store. Similarly, if you get cinnamon in a restaurant it's almost certainly cassia. Essentially cassia is cheap, tastes like real cinnamon, and has virtually no health benefits.
Most grocery stores sell cassia only - it's much cheaper than the real cinnamon and it has a less subtle, more intensive taste - good for baking, etc. Probably the only way to tell them apart in the ground form is to read the label - Ceylon cinnamon will be labeled as such, or maybe real cinnamon, true cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum. The place of origin will probably be Sri Lanka (though some other places grow it as well). If it doesn't say that, assume it's cassia. It's easy to tell apart the cinnamon sticks, however: Ceylon cinnamon sticks look like cigars, rolled up with many fine, thin layers. Cassia will be much thicker, one layer only, may have curled edges.
Those finger nails 😭
Now we can all think of those fingernails touching anything cinnamon we eat for the rest of our lives.
🤢
🤮
Holy fuck. I didn't even notice them on my first watch. How the hell did I miss that?!
I wanna touch that tree.
My question is, will the tree survive without its bark? Do they put a protective covering over it to let the bark grow back?
Did you know that Vicks vapor rub comes from the roots of the cinnamon tree. If you dig them up they smell exactly like it. Was very cool finding that out when I did a tour of a cinnamon farm in Africa.
Does the tree survive that?
It doesn’t.
This is cassia cinnamon grown in Indonesia. The original cinnamon is ceylon cinnamon from sri lanka and it comes from a much smaller plant. Its basically as wide as a finger. Since the demand for cinnamon was much larger than the supply of ceylon they started harvesting and selling cassia which can also survive the debarking process and provide a lot more yield. Still the ceylon cinnamon has a much more stronger flavour thats distinctly better than the cassia
Cinnamon trees don't die after harvest because they grow back quickly. The trees are cultivated for two or three years, then cut down at the base in a process called coppicing. In commercial operations, the entire tree is cut down to a bit above ground level, and the bark from the whole trunk is harvested. The stump will regenerate and an even fuller tree will grow within a few years.
Dammit. That looks hard. I bought myself a cinnamon tree and obviously it was another one of my fantasies… luckily it’s a pretty plant.
They’re harvesting me??
I can smell this tree
Put that tree's clothes back on. It's nakey.
Fuck I wanna be a cinnamon harvester
Vegans be like, "It's so cruel to eat animals!" While skinning a tree alive for a spice.
Imagine being a tree, having cinnamon bark to attract certain animals, and deter others. Then some fucking humans come along and flay you alive because cinnamon sticks are great in soups.
Please tell me the tree recovers. You just flayed it’s skin
Cinnamon trees are surprisingly very good at adapting, it’ll be fine. One method of harvesting involves letting the trees grow for two or three years, and then are cut down at the base in a process called “coppicing.” The bark is then harvested, separated, and dried. The tree will return again next year, with over a dozen new shoots emerging from the cut stalk which is usually done right above ground level Little edit: if they don’t cut the tree it can still regrow its bark in around 3 months. There are multiple ways to harvest.
I mean if you're not gonna eat plants that are grown from seed and then either plucked, its offspring harvested, skin flayed or more usually just wholesale ripped out and killed during harvesting, it's really not gonna leave you with many food options.
You know, I always figured such but it never occurred to me that this shit is just tasty tree bark...
Ramsey Bolton has entered the chat*
Excuse me sir put her skin back
Congratulations! It’s a boy! Doctors:
I keep forgetting Cinnamon is bark
very good trees can't scream
Skinning them alive like that.. so intreemane.
Skinned alive 😂
I really wish this was a scratch n sniff video
The tree is going "OOOOO, I feel so nakey!" and then blushes.
So that's why small cinnamon parts are crumpled.
There is more than one kind of cinnamon. Ceylon and cassia Ceylon is true cinnamon. Cassia is the most common type. Apparently there is more types than just that and they all taste a bit different.
Does the bark grow back?
It must smell like heaven.
This is most probably “cassia” and not cinnamon
Seen that in Sri Lanka... they have the best cinnamon...
Cork is havested this way and the tree lives and regrows its bark.
These cinnamon farmers are all bark and no bite.
Oh man that must smell sooo good.
Can someone explain how someone sees a tree then proceeds to skin it. Bloop cinnamon unlocked for humanity
"I have no mouth, and I must scream" -🌲
Smells like citrus and…..cinnamon - Hayley Williams
I always thought it was like, sticks from a bush
Is the tree ok after this process?
Yes it regrows pretty quickly
This feels so wrong