Christmas Nature Study: Spices

We had some friends over today and we were doing some baking. The recipe called for cloves so I was showing the girls how to crumble to cloves into the batter when I thought, "Where do cloves come from?".
So, we did some research and found out that what we call cloves are the dried flower bud from the clove tree which is an evergreen tree native to Indonesia.Which led me to the question- Where do cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger come from?

Well, I tend to think of ginger as a root but it is actually a rhizome or an underground stem which can shoot out roots. It is used as both a spice and for medicinal purposes. It was first cultivated in South Asia.

Cinnamon is a spice derived from the inner bark of the Cinnamomum tree. It is cultivated in Sri Lanka, Southern India and many other parts of the world- Brazil, Sumatra and Egypt to name a few.

The nutmeg tree is native to Indonesia and produces two spices: nutmeg and mace. The spice that I use called nutmeg is actually the ground up seed of the nutmeg tree. Mace is made from the red strands covering the seed.

So, now we know. The illustrations come from a book called Koehler's Medicinal Plants. What a great resource for nature study! It is rare- otherwise I would love to own it.