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Plants Strike Back
Episode 15 of 16
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Our Weird Planet

You're eating tree bark right now

It's a spice, not sawdust. And it's probably in your kitchen right now

By Smartasaurus· 1 min read Curious

Your spice rack is currently holding a jar of dried

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The short version
  • It's a spice, not sawdust. And it's probably in your kitchen right now
  • If you were to bite into a fresh quill, it would feel more like soft leather than a brittle stick.
  • In the ancient world, people actually believed these sticks were gathered from the nests of giant birds who used them to build sturdy homes in inac…

Your spice rack is filled with the ground-up scabs of an evergreen tree.

Cinnamon is not a fruit, a seed, or a leaf, but the literal inner skin of the *Cinnamomum verum* tree, harvested by peeling away its protective layers until the skeleton is exposed.

Farmers begin by shaving off the rough outer bark, discarding it like a wrapper. They then beat the remaining branch with a heavy rod to loosen the delicate inner phloem—the tree's vascular system that transports sugar.

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Sources (3) — tap to view
  1. 1.Cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum)
  2. 2.Cinnamon: A Multifaceted Medicinal Plant
  3. 3.The Spice that Built Empires
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Coconuts catch fire to fight bugs
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