Chinese cinnamon is known only in culture – South China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, about. Java, Sumatra. Ceylon cinnamon grows in Sri Lanka, South India, Burma, Vietnam. In culture – in the same place; in addition, in Indonesia, Japan, the islands of Madagascar, Reunion, Cameroon, the Antilles, Guyana, etc.
Chinese cinnamon is an evergreen tree up to 15 m tall. The lower leaves are alternate, the upper ones are opposite, drooping, on short petioles. The leaves are broadly oval, entire, leathery, shiny green on the upper side, with deepened main veins, and bluish-green on the underside, covered with short soft hairs. The flowers, collected in paniculate inflorescences, are small, yellowish-white, with simple separate-petaled within the carpel. The fruit is a berry.
Ceylon cinnamon is an evergreen tree or, in cultivation, a shrub. The branches are cylindrical, triangular at the apex, with opposite leaves, on short petioles. The leaves are oval, obtusely or shortly pointed, leathery, with 3-7 main veins.
Cinnamon bark is harvested from both species – Cortex Cinnamomi cassiae and Cort. Cinnamomi ceylanici. Chinese cinnamon is a bark in the form of tubes or grooves 1-3 mm thick, dark brown on the outside, sometimes covered with a layer of cork, but more often it is removed; fracture is even. The smell is fragrant, pleasant; the taste is sweetish, pleasant and slightly astringent.
Ceylon cinnamon bark is more valued than Chinese cinnamon. The best varieties are obtained exclusively from cultivated plants. The bark is collected from cut bushes, when new shoots reach 1-2 m in length. The bark is cut with a copper knife and its outer parts (periderm and primary bark up to the sclereid layer) are removed. After that, the bark is rolled into double or triple tubes and dried in the sun. The bark has a light brown color, it is very thin, often no thicker than a sheet of paper (0.2-0.5 mm).
In the bark of Chinese cinnamon there is an essential oil in the amount of 1-2%, consisting mainly of cinnamic acid aldehyde (within 90%).
The aroma of Ceylon cinnamon is subtler than that of Chinese cinnamon, which is why it is valued much more highly. Essential oil (1%) consists of cinnamic acid aldehyde (65-75%), phellandrene and eugenol (within 10%).
It is used as a means of stimulating the activity of the digestive organs, as an antiseptic and to correct the smell of medicines. Spice.
Trimmings and other scraps of the bark are used to produce cinnamon essential oil (Oleum Cinnamomi).
Substitutes for cinnamon. As substitutes for cinnamon, other wild cinnamon species are used, the bark of which is thicker and rougher and has a less pleasant aroma: Gnnamomum obtusitolium Nees and C. laureirii Nees from Vietnam; Cinnamomum burmanii Blume with about. Java and others. White cinnamon bark, Cortex Canellae albae or Cortex Winterani (Canella alba Murr., Canellaceae family), is imported from the Antilles. The bark removed from the branches of the tree is freed from the cork layer and is a grooved pieces, reddish-white on the outside; the inner surface is white; on a section under a magnifying glass, numerous secretory receptacles are visible. The smell is fragrant, similar to the smell of cinnamon, the taste is spicy, bitter. Contains essential oil (up to 1.3%), resin (within 8%) and other substances. It is applied in the same way as cinnamon.
The plant contains aromatic and phenolic compounds.
PLANTS CONTAINING AROMATIC AND PHENOLIC COMPOUNDS
Aromatic compounds in essential oils are represented by oxygen derivatives, of which the following are the most common.
Phenols in essential oils are represented by both individual compounds and phenol esters. The most common are the following.
PLANTS CONTAINING ESSENTIAL OILS
Essential oils are natural aromatic substances that are highly volatile and cause the specific smell of plants. For this reason, also due to their “oily” consistency and “greasy” stain on paper, which soon disappears, they received such a peculiar name.
Essential oils are not individual substances. These are complex mixtures of organic substances, the composition and number of which are different for each type of essential oil plants and can serve as a chemotaxonomic feature. The main group of substances that make up the essential oils of many plants are terpenes (more precisely, monoterpenes) and seseviterpenes, i.e., substances with an isoprenoid structure. However, in the essential oils of a number of plants, aromatic compounds may predominate, as well as numerous substances of the aliphatic series. There are plants with sulfur and nitrogen compounds in essential oils.
Essential oils in plants are mostly in a free state. However, some plants contain them in the form of glycosides and are released during enzymatic cleavage. Essential oils are formed in all parts of plants, but quantitatively they accumulate in them traditionally unequally.
They can be in a plant organism in a diffuse diffuse state (ie, emulsified or dissolved in cells) or accumulate, localize in special anatomical and morphological formations that are easily detected under a microscope. These excretory formations can be exogenous and endogenous.
Exogenous formations develop in the epidermal tissue and are:
– glandular “spots” – small-drop accumulations of essential oils immediately under the cuticle of the epidermis;
– glandular hairs – cylindrical epidermal outgrowths, consisting of a unicellular or multicellular pedicle and a head with cells that secrete essential oil;
– glands – epidermal outgrowths that have received the most
the highest specialization in the extraction and accumulation of essential oils. They have a different structure and can serve as a systematic feature. For example, in yasnotkovye (labial) 8 excretory cells are arranged in a rosette on a short stalk; in aster (composite) glandular cells have a vertical arrangement – 2 in 4 rows, etc.
Endogenous formations develop in parenchymal tissues and are:
– secretory cells – single (for example, in the air parenchyma of calamus rhizome) or form layers of such cells (for example, in valerian roots);
– receptacles – rounded cavities formed in the mesophyll of the leaf, peel of citrus fruits, in the bark and wood of a number of plants and filled with essential oil;
– tubules and passages – strongly elongated excretory formations found in the fruits of umbellate, bark and wood of a number of plants.
Essential oils accumulate in plants in all possible quantities: from hundredths and thousandths of a percent (for example, in violet flowers – 0.004%) to 20% or more (for example, in flower buds of carnations – up to 23%).
Essential oils are obtained: 1) by steam distillation; 2) extraction with some extractants; 3) enfleurage; 4) mechanically.
Steam distillation is the most common method. It is carried out in installations consisting of a double-jacketed still (in which steam circulates to prevent the still from cooling), a condenser and a receiver. Steam is fed into the cube loaded with raw materials from below through a perforated coil, entraining the essential oil. A mixture of cooled vapors of water and essential oil enters the receiver, where the mixture separates and excess water is removed through a tube at the bottom of the receiver (if oil is lighter than water) or through a drain tube at the top (if oil is heavier than water).
The extraction of essential oils from raw materials is carried out with volatile organic solvents in Soxhlet-type apparatuses or in column apparatuses. Subsequently, the raw material is lifted by the screw from the bottom up, and the extractant enters towards it. After distillation of the solvent, the residue is either pure essential oil or its mixture with other extracted substances (resins, waxes, etc.); in the latter case, additional cleaning is required.
Enfleurage is based on the fact that essential oil from raw materials (mainly from flowers) is absorbed by sorbents (solid fats, activated carbon, etc.) in special frame installations.
The mechanical method is used to extract essential oils from citrus fruits by pressing or scraping.
Although essential oils are very common in the plant world, their role for the plant organism and the reasons for their formation have not yet been reliably established. It was assumed that essential oils serve to protect plants from diseases and pests, to attract the smell of insects, which contributes to the pollination of flowers, to protect plants from excessive heating during the day and hypothermia at night, etc. Currently, most scientists believe that essential oils (or rather, their components) are actively involved in the metabolic processes of plant organisms.
Essential oils find a wide and varied application for medicinal, cosmetic, food (spices) and other chains.
Essential oils are classified according to the substances that make up their bulk, or substances that determine their medicinal and industrial value. There are the following groups (and subgroups) of components of essential oils:
Monoterpenes (terpenes), including:
1. Acyclic terpenes.
2. Monocyclic terpenes.
3. Bicyclic terpenes.
Sesquiterpenes, including:
1. Acyclic sesquiterpenes.
2. Cyclic sesquiterpenes.
Aromatic and phenolic compounds.
Sulfur and nitrogen-containing compounds.
The listed compounds, especially terpenoids, in essential oils can occur in the form of numerous oxygen derivatives: alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, phenols, acids, esters, lactones, oxides, quinones. The number of terpenoids also increases due to the tendency of many of these compounds to various forms of isomerism (optical, geometric, etc.).