Tra My Cinnamon

Long ago, on a bronze urn in Hue, someone carved a single word as the name of a tree: Quế, meaning cinnamon. No forest was named beside it. In the same row as that tree are a mai blossom and a hoàng đàn tree. There is also a hyacinth bean plant, a hải đường flower and a coconut weevil grub.

That urn is called the Nghị Đỉnh. It stands with eight other bronze urns in front of the Thế Tổ Miếu shrine, inside the Imperial City of Hue. Together the nine are called the Cửu Đỉnh, the Nine Urns. Emperor Minh Mạng had them cast. The order to cast them went out in 1835. By 1837, all nine urns were finished.

Across the nine urns there are 162 carved panels. Every plant and every animal is clearly labeled with its name, in Chinese characters. The people of the Quảng region still say with pride that the cinnamon tree on the bronze urn is theirs, the cinnamon of the Trà My mountain forests.

The name carved on the urn is just one word. In the Quảng region, the cinnamon of Trà My has a much longer name. It speaks of high mountains and of a jewel: cao sơn ngọc quế, the jewel cinnamon of the high mountains. The mountain part is true, because this cinnamon really does grow on mountains. Only the word for jewel in the middle does not seem to fit at all.

A jewel is smooth and clear. Trà My cinnamon is nothing like that. Its trunk does not grow straight. Knots of wood bulge out along it. The outer bark is rough and coarse. It seems strange to call such a crooked tree a jewel.

These crooked cinnamon trees grow in Trà My, the mountain country in the west of the old Quảng Nam province, now part of Da Nang city. Trà Vân is one of the places there known for its cinnamon. Trà Don and Trà Leng are two more. The trees grow on slopes from about 300 meters to 800 meters high, and in some places on mountains far higher still. Since 2011, the name Trà My has been written on a geographical indication certificate, reserved for the cinnamon of these mountains.

In the old days, Trà My cinnamon grew wild in the forest. The Ca Dong people, one group of the Xơ Đăng, brought wild cinnamon trees home to plant in their gardens. The Mơ Nông people did the same. From those gardens, cinnamon slowly spread out over the hills and into the forest. In Bắc Trà My, the Xơ Đăng also brought wild cinnamon home to plant. So did the Co people, who are also called the Kor. They grew cinnamon for their own households, and to trade and to sell.

For the Xơ Đăng people here, the Ca Dong among them, a cinnamon tree is like silver and gold. The Mơ Nông of Trà My see it the same way. A cinnamon garden is savings put aside for a whole family.

When a child marries, many Kinh families give gold and silver. The Kinh are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam. Many Xơ Đăng families in Nam Trà My give a whole cinnamon garden instead. They plant that garden while the child is still small. Across the Trà My cinnamon country, some families also plant one more cinnamon garden when a baby is born, saving it for the child's future.

Waiting for a cinnamon garden to be ready for harvest takes a very long time. In Bắc Trà My, the trees stay short and grow slowly, so a garden needs more than 20 years. In Nam Trà My, even the fastest garden takes 15 years.

The child grows up season by season, and the child's cinnamon garden slowly grows along with them. By the time the child is grown, the garden has just reached harvest age.

While the child's garden is still young, older gardens on the mountain are already of age. From the 12th month of the year, the growers walk into those gardens and look for the trees that are nearly ready to give their bark. At the foot of each such tree, they cut a ring around the bark. The ring means less water rises from the roots into the trunk. That way, the bark keeps more of its essential oil.

There are two bark-peeling seasons each year, one in spring and one as late summer turns to autumn. To part the bark from the trunk, the adults need a tool that is hard and sharp, but not too keen. One longtime grower in Trà Don has a whole set of bark-peeling tools made of buffalo horn.

Once the bark is peeled, the growers lay it out to dry. They turn the pieces face down on the ground, to shield them from the harsh sun and keep the oil inside. Once dry, cinnamon bark keeps for many years without going moldy.

The child stands and watches the pieces of bark lying face down in the sun. The child's own garden is still young. A grown-up turns over a dried piece to show the child. The outside is rough, but the bark is thick and dark, and full of oil.

Rough on the outside, precious within.

As for where the name jewel cinnamon came from, no one can yet say for sure. All that remains are old tales.

One tale tells of Princess Huyền Trân of the Trần dynasty. After she became the queen of King Chế Mân of Champa, she often suffered from rheumatism. Champa was an ancient kingdom on the central and southern coast of what is now Vietnam. Out of love for her, the king sent his officials up into the mountain forests of Quảng Nam. They were to find cinnamon wood and make her a pair of clogs. After that, her illness slowly eased.

Legend has it that around the middle of the 17th century, a Vietnamese king gave the king of Siam a kind of cinnamon. The king of Siam was so pleased that he called it cao sơn ngọc quế.

By land, and down the Thu Bồn and Vu Gia rivers, the goods of the mountain forests made their way to the port town of Hoi An. From the 17th century, trade grew ever busier in Đàng Trong, the southern realm then ruled by the Nguyễn lords. Among all the forest goods that came down there, Trà My cinnamon was one of the most precious. At the wharves, seagoing boats carried the cinnamon onward, along with areca nuts, tea and sugar.

Old accounts also say that Trà My cinnamon was sent every year to the capital, Hue, as tribute for the emperor. That was under the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty, which reigned from 1802 to 1945.

Trà My cinnamon bark tastes hot, pungent and lingering. Cooks today still use cinnamon to marinate food and give it fragrance, and to scent ice cream and cakes too.

In Trà Leng, people leave a few old trees in every cinnamon garden for seed, to keep the precious stock alive. In Nóc Ông Ní, in Trà Vân commune, stands a giant cinnamon tree. It is more than 150 years old and about 30 meters tall. No one peels its bark to sell. People take only its seeds, to raise young trees.

In 2025, the tree received one more title: Vietnam Heritage Tree. The people of Trà Vân still call it by a warmer name, the way a family speaks to its great-grandparents at home: cụ quế, the elder cinnamon.