Cinnamomum is a genus of evergreen aromatic trees and shrubs belonging to the laurel family, Lauraceae. The species of Cinnamomum have aromatic oils in their leaves and bark and are best known as the source of the spice cinnamon. The genus contains about 227 species, distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Oceania/Australasia. The genus includes a great number of economically important trees used to produce the spice cinnamon. The oldest fossils are known from the Cretaceous, but the group reached a peak of diversity during the Eocene.
Habitat
This genus is present in the Himalayas and other mountain areas, in tropical and subtropical montane rainforests, in weed-tree forests, in valleys, and in mixed forests of coniferous and deciduous broad-leaved trees, in southern China, India, and Southeast Asia.
Characteristics
All species tested so far are diploid, with the total number of chromosomes being 24.
This Lauraceae genus comprises approximately 250 trees and shrubs and most are aromatic. Some trees produce sprouts. The thick, leathery leaves are dark green, lauroid type. Laurophyll or lauroid leaves are characterized by a generous layer of wax, making them glossy in appearance, and narrow, pointed oval in shape with an 'apical mucro', or 'drip tip', which permits the leaves to shed water despite the humidity, allowing respiration from plant.
Mostly, the plants present a distinct odor. Their alternate leaves are ovate-elliptic, with margins entire or occasionally repand, with acute apices and broadly cuneate to subrounded bases. Upper leaf surfaces are shiny green to yellowish-green, while the undersides are opaque and lighter in color. Mature leaves are dark green. Young leaves are reddish brown to yellowish-red. The leaves are glabrous on both surfaces or sparsely puberulent beneath only when young; the leaves are mostly triplinerved or sometimes inconspicuously five-nerved, with conspicuous midrib on both surfaces....
