Cloves Eugenia carophyllata, Eugenia aromatica History leaves enigmatic messages for future generations to puzzle over. Nursery rhymes, for example, the satirical popular songs of their day, still hold clues to past events and personalities: “Ring-a-ring-a-roses” is actually a description of the onset of The Black Death; “Georgy Porgey”, with his womanising tendencies, was a characature of the Prince Regent, destined to become George IV; and "Peter Piper", who picked a peck of pickled peppers was a real person, one very aptly named Pierre Poivre, a French Diplomat and Governor of Mauritius, and his famous peppers were actually cloves and nutmegs. Cloves are the dried, unopened flowers of a tropical evergreen tree which was once grown only in the Moluccas. Arab spice merchants guarded the secret of their origin for centuries, as they took them, Eastwards first to China, where, during the Han Dynasty (approx. 300BC) it was mandatory to chew a clove before entering the presence of a royal personage, and then West to ancient Rome, where they acquired their common name, clavus - 'nail', due to their stud-like shape. Cloves only travelled more widely after the Venetians entered the spice trade from around 1500. Then the Moluccas were discovered by the Dutch, who, in order to keep prices high, decreed that cloves could only be cultivated on the island of Amboina and ordered all the trees on the other islands destroyed. This distressed the Moluccans because it was their custom to plant a clove tree to celebrate the birth of a child and believed that the fates of tree and child were intertwined. This monopoly also incensed the other European powers with interests in the area - notably the French and Portuguese - and the whole issue became a source of open hostility. Then along came good old Pierre Poivre, the Peter Piper of the rhyme, who smuggled clove and nutmeg seedlings back to Mauritius, thus breaking the hold of the Dutch on those spices. After that, a succession of smugglers, including the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1800 and the British in the mid-19th century, managed to break the Dutch monopoly. The anthropologist, George Frazer noted in his work, The Golden Bough, that the trees on the Moluccan Islands were treated very much like pregnant women: no-one was allowed to make a violent or sudden noise near them or to carry light or fire past them at night. It was even forbidden for a man to approach a tree wearing a hat! The theory was that the tree should be kept from any source of distress which may scare it into dropping the fruit early. Another tradition, apparently was that clove trees were only planted in the dark of the moon. Trees are first harvested after five years, each plant producing, on average, 3kg (71b) of flower buds annually. The flower buds, initially pale green, turn dark green. They are not allowed to open as they would lose their pungency and fragrance. The buds are then immersed for a few seconds in boiling water and then, stalk removed, left to dry, usually in the sun. It is possible to get two crops a year from each tree, although only one is taken to prevent damage to the trees. More than just a nice taste to add to apple pie, the pungent main constituent of cloves is eugenol, which takes its name from the generic name, Eugenia, commemorating Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), Austrian statesman, field-marshal and patron of the sciences. Although the bud contains the highest percentage of this volatile oil, other parts of the plant, such as discarded young shoots and leaves, are distilled to produce the essential oil. More than 10kg (221b) of essence comes from a single plant and is used as the base for synthetic vanilla, soaps, perfumes, toothpastes, mouthwash and medicines. European witches have used the spice in spells invoking protection, money and love since the Middle Ages, and by European tradition, taken with colonists to North America, cloves were carried in a small pouch by the bereaved as a source of comfort. Culpeper assigned it the ruling house of Jupiter, associated with Sagittarius. Herbal practitioners still recommend cloves for their antiseptic properties, as an anaesthetic, to ease toothache, indigestion, nausea and bad breath. Cloves have excellent preservative powers and are widely used in pickles and chutneys, and the traditional clove and orange pomanders, first carried in this country by Cardinal Wolsey in the 16th century, not only sweeten the air, but also repel moths. Antiseptic, stimulant, stomachic and digestive, anti-infectant cloves are effective against coli bacilli, streptococci, staphylococci, pneumococci and as an antimycolic, and are used in dentistry for their antiseptic and analgesic properties. Oh, yes, and they're very good in apple pies, too! 1 teaspoonful of ground cloves is equal, on average, to 2.1g, 7kcals and contains vitamins A, Bl, B2, niacin, vitamin C, sodium, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium and zinc.