Shopper News home => Herb Notes home

Herb of the Month

Cloves--Syzygium Aromaticum

Winter holidays in New England can be joyous with the aroma of cloves--a key ingredient in hot mulled cider, gingerbread, and pumpkin pie. There is something spirit-lifting about the penetrating fragrance of these half-inch little dark woody spikes with the prickly cross and bud-like cushion at one end. Cloves actually are dried buds from a broad-leafed ever-green tree in the myrtaceae family (also the same family as Australia's eucalyptus). The clove tree is native to Indonesia and is now cultivated in countries close to the Indian Ocean (Madagascar is a primary commercial producer), as well as the Philippines, Brazil, and the West Indies.

Cloves have been important agents of health and well-being for thousands of years in the traditions of China and India. Europeans knew them only as rarities through trade, but cloves became a steady item of commerce in the west after Magellan brought them back from his voyage around the world in 1512. Today, cloves and the oil made from clove buds have many commercial uses, as well as their continuing roles in cuisine and ayurvedic, Chinese, and other healing traditions. Learning the full history of cloves would help us understand globalization as it has unfolded over the centuries, but I know only a few highpoints.

The herb books tell us that cloves are a part of longstanding Chinese herbal treatments for indigestion, diarrhea, intestinal parasites, athlete's foot, and other fungal infections. Most add that Han dynasty emperors (207 BC to 220 AD) required those who wished to speak to them to hold cloves in their mouths. The books speculate that this was to mask bad breath, but who knows? It may have been to stimulate wise words. Try speaking with these sharp, spicy little bits in your mouth, and I'll bet you'll say something special!

My friend reminds me that food preparation was not separate from healing in cultures more holistically centered than ours. I'm beginning to get a good sense of this from the way cloves are used in the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent. Almost every dish in my cookbook features cloves along with cinnamon, cayenne, turmeric, cumin, coriander, and ginger--all of them potent as healing herbs in the ayurvedic system. In symphony, these substances not only create a joyous aroma for each meal, but also combine their different properties to keep our energy flowing and our health vibrant. In this cuisine, cloves are meant to be an aid for respiratory and digestive problems. In fact the whole lineup of spices in Indian cooking are intended to stimulate the enzymes which help us digest plant proteins.

Aromatherapists prescribe essential oil of clove not only for digestive problems, but also for the relief of such maladies as burns, acne, arthritis, asthma, colds, and flu. Most herbalists warn that direct applications of the oil can irritate the skin, that clove oil should not be used medicinally by pregnant women, and that clove cigarettes (sometimes used by people trying to kick the habit) can be as carcinogenic as nicotine. In tiny doses on the skin, all the same, clove is yet another of the essential oils that might become your best non-commercial insect repellent.

Growing up in middle America in the fifties and knowing nothing of their rich cultural history, I still had a special relationship with cloves. In my family, we used powdered cloves in miniscule amounts for baking, especially at Christmastime. We also used the woody little spikes for holiday craft projects like the eyes and belt buckles of "Apple Santys." These were fat little Santa Claus figures we toothpicked together out of big red delicious apples with marshmallow arms, legs, and heads to which we attached belts, hats, and beards made of surgical cotton. The apples, the sugary marshmallows, and the spicy cloves blended into a wonderful aroma that permeated the holidays.

You will experience many of the properties of cloves if you try making pomander balls--which we children often labored over as holiday gifts for our relatives. These involve sticking dozens of "little nails" (as the Dutch call cloves) into the rinds of a lemon or orange until their surface is covered with the prickly brown buds. The pomander has to dry out for a couple of weeks, but as it does, the antiseptic properties of the cloves prevent it from rotting or molding, and the fruit shrinks like a mummy, becoming as light as a ping pong ball. Our grandmothers and aunts loved to store these labors of our love--tied up in beautiful Christmas ribbons--in closets or drawers, keeping them fragrant for years. These pungent spheres also discouraged pests. I can remember staying up late into the night to finish a pomander--my thumbs numb from pressing the prickly buds into tough orange rinds, yet my senses alive with the wonderful odor released by the oily citrus glands and the many broken bits of cloves. The memory returns in full force whenever I experience the powerful aroma of cloves.

Louise Dunlap teaches yoga and writing, and is working on a book called Writing for Social Change.