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Food - The aromatic leaves are dried and used as a flavouring, known as tejpat in various indian dishes. The bark is used as a spice like the ture cinnamon, and is commonly added to the bark of true cinnamon as an adulterant. Medicine - The dried bark is used to treat stomach-ache. The leaves are used in the tretment of colic and diarrhoea.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal
It grows in mountain slopes, evergreen broad-leaved forests in valleys, watersides at altitudes of 900-2000 m asl.
The leaves, when crushed, release a sweet cinnamon-like fragrance. Used as a spice since ancient times.
Trees, up to 20 m tall.
Bark gray-brown, scented. Branchlets tea-brown, terete, glabrous, young ones ± angled, sparsely gray puberulent initially soon glabrate.
Leaves are shiny green, oval to oblong leaves with pointed tips and smooth edges, arranged alternately on the stem, measuring 7.5 to 15 centimeters long and 2.5 to 5.5 centimeters wide.
It bears tiny, greenish-white flowers in clusters that appear in the leaf axils or at the branch tips. These inconspicuous blossoms measure only up to 6 mm and lack petals.
Fruit obovoid or ellipsoid, 10-14 mm; perianth lobes persistent on rim of cupule.
Flowering: April-May