SILVA OF NORTH AMERICA. MYRTACES. 
40 
thick and fleshy ; cotyledons thick, more or less conferruminate into a homogeneous mass ; radicle very 
short, turned towards the hilum. 
Eugenia, to which as now enlarged more than seven hundred species have been referred, and 
which, according to the best authorities, contains about five hundred species, is represented in North 
America by five species of southern Florida, three of which are small trees and one is a low shrub.’ 
The genus appears in all tropical and semitropical regions, abounding in the tropics of America’ and 
Asia,? and being less common in tropical Africa,‘ Australia,’ and the Pacific islands.° 
Several species are valued for their stimulant and digestive properties ; 
timber ® or edible fruit, and others are cultivated for the beauty of their flowers or foliage.’ 
” some produce useful 
The 
e ° ° » e 11 
most useful species of the genus are Lugenia aromatica,” which furnishes the cloves of commerce, 
1 Eugenia longipes, Berg, Linnea, xxvii. 150 (1854). — Chap- 
man, Fl. ed. 2, Suppl. 620.—Sargent, Forest Trees N. Am. 10th 
Census U. S. ix. 89. 
2 Berg, Martius Fl. Brasil. xiv. pt. i. 214. —Grisebach, Fl. Brit. 
W. Ind. 235 (Caryophyllus, Syzygium, and Jambosa), 236 (Eu- 
genia). 
8 Miquel, Fl. Ind. Bat. i. 407 (Jambosa), 440 (Eugenia), 446 
(Syzygium), 462 (Caryophyllus). — Thwaites, Enum. Pl. Zeylan. 
114 (Eugenia), 115 (Jambosa), 116 (Syzygium). — Hooker f. FV. 
Brit. Ind. ii. 470. — Forbes & Hemsley, Jour. Linn. Soc. xxiii. 297. 
4 A. Richard, Fl. Abyss. i. 284 (Syzygium). — Harvey & Sonder, 
Fl. Cap. ii. 521 (Syzygium, Eugenia). — Oliver, Fl. Trop. Ajr. ii. 
436. 
5 Bentham, Fi. Austral. iii. 280. 
6 Gray, Bot. Wilkes Explor. Exped. 510. 
7 Rosenthal, Syn. Pl. Diaphor. 926.— Baillon, Hist. Pl. vi. 340. 
8 Gamble, Man. Indian Timbers, 190.— Maiden, Useful Native 
Plants of Australia, 530. 
9 Naudin, Manuel de ’ Acclimateur, 277. 
10 Baillon, 2. c. 311, f. 288, 289 (1877) ; Traite Bot. Med. 1015, 
f. 2832-2834. 
Caryophyllus aromaticus, Linnzus, Spec. 515 (1753).— De Can- 
dolle, Prodr. iii. 262. — Miquel, J. c. 462. 
Eugenia caryophyllata, Thunberg, Diss. De Caryophyllis aroma- 
ticis (1788). — Willdenow, Spec. ii. pt. ii. 965. 
Myrtus Caryophyllus, Sprengel, Syst. i. 485 (1825). 
11 The Clove-tree, a handsome evergreen thirty or forty feet in 
height, is endemic in five small islands west of New Guinea, which 
It was 
early carried to Amboyna, probably before the discovery of that 
constitute the original Molucca group, or Clove Islands. 
island by the Portuguese, and is now cultivated in many of the 
islands of the East Indian Archipelago, in southern India, Ceylon, 
Mauritius, and Bourbon, in Zanzibar and Pemba off the eastern 
coast of Africa, and occasionally in the West Indies. Cloves, which 
are the dried flower-buds of this tree, were used in China during 
the Han dynasty (B.C. 266 to A. D. 220) ; they were perhaps known 
to the Romans as early as the first century, as Pliny’s caryophyllon, 
a spice imported from India for the sake of its odor, may refer to 
them ; for centuries they have been well known in Europe, and a 
considerable commerce in cloves was carried on by the overland 
Indian route until the discovery of the Spice Islands by the Por- 
tuguese at the beginning of the sixteenth century. For a century 
the Portuguese controlled the clove-trade, but in 1605 they were 
expelled from the Moluccas by the Dutch who, in order to secure 
a monopoly of this trade by confining it to the Amboyna group, 
endeavored to exterminate the Clove-tree from its native islands. 
They were at first so far successful that the Clove Islands no longer 
exported cloves ; but the Dutch monopoly was broken before the 
end of the eighteenth century by the energy of the governor of the 
French islands of Mauritius and Bourbon, who succeeded in 1770 
in introducing into them the Clove-tree and the Nutmeg. From 
Mauritius the Clove-tree was carried to Cayenne, and then to Zan- 
zibar and other tropical countries, and now Zanzibar and Pemba 
produce a large part of the clove-crop of the world. (See Tessier, 
Sur UV Importation du Giroflier des Moluques aux fsles de France, de 
Bourbon et des Sechelles, et de ces isles & Cayenne.) 
The Clove-tree flourishes in clayey loam and requires a good 
drainage, exposure to the sun, and protection from high winds. It 
is raised from seed or by layering the branches, which will root in 
six or eight months in moist ground. The seeds, which soon lose 
their power of germination, should be sown a foot apart in rich soil 
as soon as gathered and not more than two inches below the sur- 
face, when they will germinate at the end of five or six weeks. 
The seedlings require an abundant supply of water and protection 
from the sun. Usually the seedlings are not transplanted until 
they are three or four feet high, when they should be set in pits 
filled with enriched surface-soil ; they require shading for two or 
The 
ground occupied by a Clove-tree plantation requires careful and 
three years, Banana-plants being often used for this purpose. 
constant cultivation in order to produce the best results ; liberal 
dressings of manure are recommended, and in dry weather a thick 
mulch of litter increases the vigor of the trees. 
The flower-buds are at first white, then green, and finally bright 
red, in which stage they are gathered. In Zanzibar this is done by 
hand from a movable stage, each bud being picked separately ; in 
the East Indies the buds are gathered by hand from the lower 
branches and beaten with bamboo poles from the upper ones on to 
the ground, which is swept clean to receive them, or on to cloths 
stretched under the trees. The yield of flower-buds varies in dif- 
ferent years ; occasionally none are produced, and a heavy crop is 
gathered only at intervals of five or six years. Five or six pounds 
is considered an average annual crop from a tree in its prime. In 
Sumatra the length of life of the Clove-tree is from twenty to 
twenty-four years, although in Amboyna it is said that it does not 
begin producing until its twelfth or fifteenth year, and continues 
The flower-buds 
are dried in the sun as soon as gathered and are then ready for 
In some parts of the East Indies they are cured on 
productive for nearly a hundred and fifty years. 
shipment. 
frames over a slow fire before exposure to the sun. 
Cloves contain sixteen to eighteen per cent. of essential oil, oleum 
caryophylli, a colorless yellow liquid with the odor and taste of 
cloves, and composed of a mixture of hydrocarbon and eugenol in 
variable proportions, caryophyllin, a considerable proportion of 
gum and tannic acid. 
The principal consumption of cloves is in cooking ; in medicine 
they are used to modify the action of other drugs, entering into 
