CLOVES (from Fr. doe, from Let. cloves, nail, so called from the shape). The dried flower-buds of the clove-tree, Coryophyllus aro mallet's, of the natural order Myrtace(e. The clove-tree is from 15 to 40 feet high, evergreen, with a beautiful pyramidal head. The flowers are small. but produced in great profusion in eymes. The leaves, flowers, and bark have an aromatic odor. The ripe fruit resembles an olive in shape, but is not quite so large; it is of a dark-red color; it sometimes appears in com merce in a dried state, under the curious name of 'mother cloves': it has an odor and flavor sim ilar to cloves, but much weaker: the broken fruit-stalks are sometimes also used for the same purposes as cloves, but the flower-buds them selves arc the principal product of the tree. They are gathered, and are dried by exposure to the smoke of wood-fires, and afterwards to the rays of the sun, or by the latter alone. When first gathered they are reddish, but become of a deeper-brown color. The unexpanded corolla forms a little round head at the end of the calyx tube, which is about half an inch long, and thus the appearance is not unlike that of a little nail. whence the name. The elove-tree is a native of the Spice Islands, but is now cultivated in Sumatra, Bourbon, Mauritius, some parts of the West Indies. and elsewhere. For illustration, see
Plate of FLAVORING-PLANTS. The wild clo•e-tree of the West Indies is Pimento acris. See :MYR TACE.E.
The properties of cloves depend chiefly on an essential oil—oil of cloves which forms one fifth or one-sixth of the whole weight, and. is used for flavoring dessert dishes and articles of confectionery. The oil of cloves is obtained by repeatedly distilling cloves with water, when two oils pass over, one of which is lighter and the other is heavier than water. The oil has a hot, acrid taste, is light-yellow when pure, and brown red when not so carefully prepared. It has a characteristic odor, and is soluble in ether, alco hol, and the fixed oils. When taken internally in small quantities. it has the effect of aiding diges tion and of stimulating the appetite. It is some times used in medicine as a stomachic, carmina tive, and antispasmodic, and is often added to senininony and castor-oil to prevent the griping that is likely to be caused by those substances. Oil of cloves is further employed in scenting soaps. and by the distiller. The chief constitu ents of the oil are eugenol, or eugenic' acid, C,A202 and a terpenc, C„H„.