I wasn’t sure what to expect when I signed up for the spices
garden tour for a small of Rs.100/per person on our way to Munnar at Chirackal spices garden.
Our guide Anbu who work in the spices plantation and is part
of the adjoining store accompanied us in the dense spice garden which covered
about 45 acres and had a number of interesting and common place spice
varieties. The first spice that we saw was the insulin plant, which is supposedly very good for people who
have diabetes. The leaves which had a strong but pleasing aroma was to be
immersed in boiling water and the extract taken for 40 days continuously and is
supposed to bring the sugar level in control.
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Spices tour with our Guide |
We also saw some of the spices more commonly used in our
kitchen every day. Pepper, cloves, bay leaves used in biriyani, cardamom,
cinnamon, asafetida all of which form an integral part of every Indian kitchen.
But it was surprising that little did we know about how the plant looks like,
what part of the plant are we eating, how and where is it grown and how it is
processed.
I was surprised to know that asafetida is processed from the
sap milk of that tree, cocoa grows on the tree bark, Cinnamon and bay leaves
are bark and leaf of the same tree, cardamom grows near its roots and pepper
grows in beautiful bunches.
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| Vanilla Plant |
The garden also had cocoa which were just post the harvest
season, and had some small flowers that grow in the barks and apparently grows
big and matures to become cocoa. We also saw the rudraksha tree with the
fruits. Rudraksha is apparently nut of the fruit and what type of rudraksha can
be found only when the rudraksha is split open. The price of a rudraksha is
determined by its size and the number of faces. The one faced rudraksha being
the rarest and the 5 faced the most common. The rudraksha occupies a very
special place in the hindu mythology where it is believed to have originated
out of the tears of lord Siva and has many mystical powers and purifies the
energy field of the place/person.
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| Magnificent Mango Tree |
We also saw mango trees of over a hundred years which looked
beautiful and majestic. The garden also had Silver Oak trees, which are
omnipresent in the tea gardens. The specialty of an oak tree is that it absorbs
water during the rainy days and discharges them slowly during the dry season,
as a resultant it keeps the plantation around it healthy and green, unlike
Eucalyptus or Sandalwood, which are more parasitic in nature. The garden also
had a sandalwood tree which was about 225 years old.
What I was most impressed about was the vanilla plant which
was a humble looking creeper plant. Apparent Vanilla needs careful maintenance
and an expert care. Vanilla has a male and a female flower which needs to be
manually pollinated before 8 AM every day for 5 continuous months for it to be
successful. This is a very intricate
process, right from identification of the gender of the flower to the manual
pollination process and requires experts all through the way.
The 30 minute tour around the spice garden gave me a very
good appreciation of the little ingredients that add spice to my food and life.
It is amazing how much work goes into each of them and how little we know and
appreciate it. Kudos to the farmers and all those involved in the food chain.
What have been your interesting experiences in the discovery
of food ??!!!
