LITMIR.BIZ

      Cinnamon sticks are in fact dried curls of bark which are removed in thin slivers from the Cinnamomum zeylanicum tree. Cassia, which is often sold as cinnamon, comes from a related species and is darker brown in color with a stronger flavor.

      Cloves and nutmeg, indigenous to the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia, were planted in Sri Lanka by the Dutch who controlled most of the Dutch East Indies. Cardamom, indigenous to both Sri Lanka and southern India, was another valuable spice which flourished in the wetter regions of the country.

      All of Sri Lanka's spices are used to flavor savory dishes such as curries; some also add their fragrance and flavor to desserts and cakes. Spices such as cinnamon therefore command a very important position in Sri Lankan culture, not only as culinary flavorings but also by virtue of their having played such a major role in the country's history.

      Banking on Tea

      Or how the word “Ceylon” was immortalized

      Douglas Bullis

      Aserendipitous twist turned a disastrous blight of coffee rust, which swept through the island's coffee estates in the 1870s, into a tea bonanza: the pretty but unassuming little bush became Sri Lanka's chief export and immortalized the word "Ceylon.” A few tea plants brought from China took very well to the cool, crisp highland climate of the Looloocondrie Estate near Kandy. The island's planters were much relieved to find that tea plants love the same climate that coffee does, and that tea has just as enthusiastic a following all around the world.

      Converting a green leaf into a tasty brown beverage is a quite a story in inorganic chemistry. Yet it is an everyday event in the slab-sided white or aluminum-painted tea factories that dot the flowing hills. These are slatted with louvers to hasten the drying process. Within them the three steps of withering, grinding, and fermenting convert the fresh leaves to a moist, black mass, which is then heated in a stove to reduce to two percent all the moisture originally contained in the leaf.

      Once broken into flakes, tea is graded into names based on the size of the flake. These names have the kind of arcane character often emanating from professionals when talking to each other. In the case of tea, the size categories are pekoe, orange pekoe, broken orange pekoe, broken orange pekoe fannings, and dust—the latter a low quality, inexpensive tea that finds its way into many of the world's teabags.