For the blog assignment I have chosen the crop cloves, which is a spice native to The Mollucas, Indonesia. Due to cloves originating from there, and it being the largest producing country, I have chosen the country Indonesia.
Classifying Cloves
The scientific name of cloves is: Syzygium aromaticum. They belong to the plantea kingdom but also to the sub-kingdoms: Angiosperms, Eudicots and Rosids. Furthermore they belong to the Myrtaceae family and Myrtales order. The Genus they belong to is the Syzygium. The tree is an evergreen which means that the leaves are green troughout the whole year. The cloves itself are also available trough the whole year. ( "Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & L. M. Perry", 2011)
Cloves, as a spice can be categorised within the medicinal and psychoactive crops. This is due to it being used as a bioactive ingredient (for cooking) but it also has a medical use as a painkiller due to the eugenol within the clove.
History
The first signs of clove trade was found by archeologists in Syria were a trade vessel was found containing cloves. They expect this was all around 1721 BC. Furthermore there are records of a chinese leader of the Han dynasty who demanded those who spoke to him chewing cloves to freshen their breath.
As mentioned earlier clove trees originate from the spice islands of Indonesia. (Mollucas) The production stayed there untill more modern times allowed people to spread the seeds around the world, and so started growing it on other tropical places. The oldest clove tree is about 350 - 400 years old and is located on Ternate. Due to the high value of cloves and spices in the colonial era the Dutch ofcourse didn't like the seeds to be spread, and so tried to keep a monopoly in the clove trade. (Wikepedia.org/clove, 2017)
https://npgsweb.ars-grin.gov/gringlobal/taxonomydetail.aspx?50069
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clove
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