Cloves-Zerof

Cloves are aromatic dried flower buds of a tropical tree. When fresh, they are pink in colour, but they are harvested when they are still in their immature state and dried out when it turns reddish brown or rust-brown in colour.

They resemble small nails, with a tapering stem in shape with a rounded cross section larger end, and is topped with an open four-pointed crown containing the flower bud. Most cloves are highly flavoured with a warm, pungent and aromatic bouquet. The best crop retains its natural oil even after drying and is plump and not brittle or withered. Cloves are sold whole or ground and are readily available at a reasonable price. The ground cloves deteriorate very quickly and should be kept in an airtight container away from sunlight.

A little bit of history

Pierre Poivre, who was in the 1760s Administrator Intendant of Isle de France (in present day Mauritius), believed the Seychelles islands had a future as a home for spice gardens, providing a source of income for France and breaking the Dutch monopoly over the spice trade in the process. In order to obtain the spices, Poivre arranged clandestine smuggling forays to obtain plants and seeds from the Dutch Spice Islands in 1769-1770. He once landed at the island of Timor, and smuggled more than 3,000 nutmeg plants and other fruit trees and spices out to the islands of Mauritius and Réunion,.

In 1771, Poivre sent Antoine Gillot to Seychelles to establish a spice garden. Gillot worked on at Anse Royale, on Mahe Island, establishing nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon and pepper plants.

Clove tree

Unfortunately in 1780, the spice gardens were partly burnt down when Lieutenant Romainville set fire to the plantations after he saw an approaching ship and mistakenly believed that the British were about to invade Mahé. At that time, war was being waged against England and to prevent the plantations from falling into English hands, the plantation was surrounded by flammable materials ready to be fired at any time and the plan worked! The vessel turned out to be a French slaver flying the English flag colours because she feared that the islands were already occupied by the English.

Some of the clove trees must have escaped destruction for, in a census of the resources of the colony taken in 1803-04, 2,000 clove trees were listed. The cloves were presumably grown for export. However, around 1898 the export of clove buds ceased although there were still many large plantations of old cloves in the islands. The main focus then turned to vanilla, timber and coconuts.

In the early 1900s the focus returned to the cloves but not for the buds but for its leaves and the distillation of cloves oil from these leaves. The export of clove oil rose steadily until 1925, when it reached 3,800 kg and all were exported, but after that date, little or none was exported.

clove buds

As occurred with other resources, such as the giant tortoise and their hard wood timber trees, the Seychellois, then, seemed to have used their cloves with no thoughts for their future. In 1930, Dupont, then Director of Agriculture, wrote “…many groves still survived some 20 years ago. The trees have all been exploited since for the extraction of oil from their leaves, but as they were very lofty trees, they had been cut down murderously to get at the leaves. The younger trees that had been planted mainly at La Misère are still living but they have also been very roughly treated for cropping of their leaves, although in some cases one part of the tree only was cropped at a time”.

In the 1930’s a few clove trees were planted under the reafforestation scheme in various parts of the islands. The distillation of oil continued to a small extent, but there was no export of oil as such. Some planters preferred to mix the clove oil with their cinnamon oil, the export of which was considerable. It reached about 57,000 kg in 1947. The reason why this was done was to boost the quality of the cinnamon oil because clove oil contains considerable amount of eugenol much more than is found in cinnamon oil.

Although some clove trees are still found scattered around the islands, it is unfortunate that this industry has disappeared with little hope of it returning.