Cinnamomum - Characteristics

Characteristics

All species tested so far are diploid, with the total number of chromosomes being 24. This Lauraceae genus comprises more than 270 trees and shrubs and most are aromatics Some trees produce sprouts. The thick, leathery leaves are dark green, lauroid type. Laurophyll or lauroid leaves are characterized by a generous layer of wax, making them glossy in appearance, and narrow, pointed oval in shape with an apical mucro, or 'drip tip', which permit the leaves to shed water despite the humidity, allowing perspiration and respiration from plant. Plants of the laurel forests must adapt to high rainfall and humidity. The trees adapted by developing leaves that repel water.

Mostly the plant present an odour distinct. Alternate leaves are ovate-elliptic, margin entire or occasionally repand, with acute apices and broadly cuneate to subrounded base. Upper leaf surface is shiny green to yellowish green, while the underside is opaque and lighter in color. Mature leaves are dark green. Young leaves reddish brown to yellowish red. The leaves are glabrous on both surfaces or sparsely puberulent beneath only when young; the leaves mostly triplinerved or sometimes inconspicuously five-nerved, with conspicuous midrib on both surfaces. The axils of lateral nerves and veins are conspicuously bullate above, dome-shaped. Terminal buds perulate.

The axillary panicle is 3.5–7 cm long. It is a genus of monoecious species. Hermaphrodite flowers, greenish white, white to yellow are glabrous or downy and pale to yellowish brown. Mostly small flowers. The perianth is glabrous or puberulent outside and densely pubescent inside. The purplish-black fruit is an ovate, ellypsoidal or subglobose drupe. The perianth-cup in fruit is cupuliform. A dark-purple fruit, the berry or drupe.