Are Cinnamon Sticks Wood?

Cinnamon is a spice used in food and beverages.

Cinnamon, a popular spice used in both sweet and savory dishes, comes from tree bark. It has been used throughout the ages for culinary and medicinal purposes, and is consumed worldwide.

Types of Trees

Cinnamon comes from inner bark of trees of the genus Cinnamomum, native of Southeast Asia. Different tree varieties, including Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Cinnamomum aromaticum, Cinnamomum verum and Cinnamomum burmannii, produce slightly different varieties of the spice. Cinnamon trees grow in India, Sri Lanka, China, Brazil, Java, Madagascar, Vietnam, the West Indies and Zanzibar.

Cultivation

Cinnamon branches are harvested from cinnamon trees. Harvesters remove the outer bark and then loosen the inner bark by beating the branches. The thin inner bark is removed in long rolls and allowed to dry. Once dried, it is cut into smaller lengths for sale.

Bark -- Not Wood

According to chapter 3 of the Forestry Product Laboratory's "Wood Handbook," wood and bark are two different structures in a tree, separated by a layer known as the vascular cambium. This means that if cinnamon sticks are made from inner bark, they are not made from wood.

References

• Forestry Products Laboratory: Chapter 3, Wood handbook
• Free Dictionary.com: Wood
• Spice Trade.com: Cinnamon

Resources

• Ecology.info: Bark Ecology