Eating tree bark is often the punchline of some bad joke about a healthful diet. But we do it — collectively, to the tune of tens of millions of pounds a year. Odds are, you have some right in your pantry.
It is cinnamon, of course — the best thing to come from tree bark since aspirin, and the best-selling component of the pumpkin-spice axis of fall flavors, dwarfing nutmeg and cloves by at least a factor of 10.
There are several species of trees with the cinnamon-yielding bark, but they’re all from the genus Cinnamonum. If you start looking into cinnamon’s provenance, you’ll find a school of thought that insists there is only one kind of “true” cinnamon — from the bark of C. verum, which is native to Sri Lanka. To hear that school of thought tell it, that cinnamon has a more sophisticated, subtle flavor than other kinds.
Should you encounter someone from that school, you could reasonably say, “I bet you couldn’t pick it out of a lineup.” It’s a pretty safe bet. We did a blind tasting, and none of us could. The reality is that we are a planet endowed with many tree species that have fragrant, cinnamony bark, and that’s a good reason to find joy in the world.