{
  "id": "canela-de-quito",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "La canela de Quito — the Amazonian spice the Spanish record described by its cupules",
  "summary": "In the 1530s Spanish witnesses in Peru reported a cinnamon that was not cinnamon: an aromatic traded down to Quito that came not as bark but as the cup of a fruit, \"unos vassillos como de bellotas\". Oviedo printed that testimony three times. Modern chemistry of Ocotea quixos, the Amazonian ishpingo whose dried cupules are still its commercial product, matches the description — and the same pages carry the killing at Cajamarca and the nine hundred Andean dead on one crossing to Quito.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "botany",
    "natural-history",
    "ecuador",
    "peru",
    "amazon",
    "trade",
    "food",
    "chemistry",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "spanish-empire",
    "columbian-exchange"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "oviedo-historia-general-y-natural-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "medicinal-plant-trade-from-spanish-america-1717-1815"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "vainilla-de-las-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "columbian-exchange"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What was the \"cinnamon of Quito\" the Spanish looked for in the Amazon?",
    "What is ishpingo (Ocotea quixos)?",
    "Did the Spanish find real cinnamon in South America?",
    "What part of the ishpingo tree is used as a spice?",
    "What did sixteenth-century Spanish sources say about Amazonian cinnamon?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The first notice read here is a deposition, not a chronicle. In book XLVI, chapter XVI of Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias, the testimony of Diego de Molina, who had been at Cajamarca, is transcribed; on page 215 of the 1855 Madrid printing it reads: \"Hay muy buena canela, é de aquesta se truxo una carga ó dos, por mandado de Atabaliba, de háçia la provinçia de Quito, y es de otra forma que la canela de la Espeçieria, porque esta es como vassillos ó engaste de alguna fructa.\" The witness is explicit that it is not the cinnamon of the Spice Islands, and that what arrives is not bark but a small vessel or setting of a fruit.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1855-tomo4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The second notice makes it a trade rather than a curiosity. On page 227, describing the land of Quito, Oviedo writes: \"Á una parte de Quito se ha descubierto é hay canela, que nasçe en unos árboles pequeños, é tráenla á rescatar á Quito, que son unos capullos de çierta fructa, é pues ellos son tales que imitan en el sabor á la perfetta canela, muy mejor debe ser la fructa.\" Small trees, an existing indigenous trade bringing the product down to Quito to be bartered, and again the traded part is the capullo — the cup of a fruit — not the bark.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1855-tomo4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "The third notice, on page 241, adds the shape. Of the country reached beyond Riobamba: \"allí hallaron canela muy buena, á manera de unos vassillos como de bellotas, pero mayores é quassi llanos, é no tan encasquillados como los de la bellota, sino más abiertos é quassi llanos, porque la fructa debe ser mucho mayor que bellotas.\" An acorn cup, but larger, flatter and more open than an acorn's — a description of a woody floral cup precise enough to be tested four and a half centuries later.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1855-tomo4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "What is traded today under that description is Ocotea quixos, a Lauraceae of the Ecuadorian Amazon. A 2021 analysis in Plants of the essential oils of its different structures records that its \"primary commercial product consists of dry cupules\", the floral structures, while \"bark and leaves also present aromatic properties and are sometimes used as substitutes\"; that it is traditionally used as a food aroma \"due to its strong similarity with cinnamon\"; and that the three parts differ chemically, the cupules dominated by (E)-methyl cinnamate, the bark by (E)-cinnamaldehyde — the compound that carries the smell of true cinnamon — and the leaves by (E)-cinnamyl acetate. The part the sixteenth-century witnesses said was brought down to Quito is the part the twenty-first-century trade still sells.",
      "sources": [
        "gilardoni-2021-ocotea-quixos-enantioselective"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "The names carry the same history. A 2021 paper in Molecules on the variability of the species' leaf oil records that it is known by the Quechua name \"ishpingo\" and by the Spanish names \"canela\", \"canelo\", \"flor de canela\" and \"canela de la amazonía\", designations that relate to its smell, \"similar to cinnamon\", and that leaves and fruit calyces are used to prepare aromatic beverages. The paper also shows how variable the plant is: across sampled populations (E)-cinnamyl acetate ranges from 5.96 to 41.65 per cent of the leaf oil, (E)-methyl cinnamate from 0.38 to 37.91 per cent and trans-caryophyllene from 8.77 to 37.02 per cent — a spread that would have made any attempt at a standardised colonial commodity difficult.",
      "sources": [
        "valarezo-2021-ocotea-quixos-variability"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The identification is this object's, and it is stated as an inference rather than borrowed from an authority. Neither modern paper mentions Oviedo or the sixteenth century, and Oviedo names no botanist; what links them is the agreement of three independent particulars — an Amazonian tree near Quito, a spice sold as the cup of a fruit rather than as bark, and a cinnamon-like aroma without being cinnamon — against a species whose commercial product is precisely dried cupules with a cinnamon smell. The inference is strong but not proven from the sources read here, which is why this claim carries the lowest confidence in the entry: other aromatic Lauraceae grow in the same forests, and no page opened here excludes them.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1855-tomo4",
        "gilardoni-2021-ocotea-quixos-enantioselective"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.6
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The cost is not in a separate literature; it is in the same paragraphs. The page that records Molina's cinnamon (215) records, four paragraphs earlier and from the same witness, that when Atahualpa was taken at Cajamarca \"murieron en la plaça al tiempo que fué presso Atabaliba, hasta dos mill é ochoçientos indios, é que en seguimiento dellos matarian otros tantos ó pocos menos ó más fuera de la plaça\". The page that gives the acorn-cup description (241) records what the search for Quito's wealth cost the people made to carry it: crossing a snow pass, Pedro de Alvarado's force lost \"çiento é çinqüenta españoles é diez mugeres, é quassi nueveçientos indios é indias naborias y esclavos que llevaban de serviçio\". Nine hundred enslaved and service-bound Andean men and women dead on one crossing, in the same source, on the same leaf as the spice.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1855-tomo4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "What this entry does not claim. No page opened here describes Gonzalo Pizarro's 1541 expedition to the País de la Canela or Francisco de Orellana's descent of the Amazon, and nothing above should be read as covering them. Nothing here states that the canela of Quito ever became a commercial export to Europe, or explains why it did not; the sources read show an indigenous trade that Spaniards noticed and priced against the Asian spice, and stop there. Oviedo himself never saw the tree: his three notices are hearsay from witnesses he names, which is why they are cited as testimony he transcribed rather than as observation.",
      "sources": [
        "oviedo-historia-1855-tomo4"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "secondary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "English-language coverage of \"the cinnamon of Quito\" is almost entirely the story of Gonzalo Pizarro's disastrous 1541 expedition, in which the spice is a rumour that lured men to their deaths and is never described. The Spanish record does describe it, in testimony taken from men who had handled it, and the description is specific enough to be checked: not bark but the cup of a fruit, like an acorn cup but larger and flatter. This object puts those three passages side by side with two 2021 analytical papers showing that the Amazonian ishpingo's commercial product is its dried cupules — and marks the identification as its own inference at 0.6 rather than passing it off as settled. The dead of Cajamarca and of Alvarado's snow crossing are quoted from the same pages as the spice, because that is where the source put them.",
  "confidence": 0.75,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-17",
  "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/canela-de-quito",
  "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/canela-de-quito.json",
  "jsonld": {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "name": "La canela de Quito — the Amazonian spice the Spanish record described by its cupules",
    "description": "In the 1530s Spanish witnesses in Peru reported a cinnamon that was not cinnamon: an aromatic traded down to Quito that came not as bark but as the cup of a fruit, \"unos vassillos como de bellotas\". Oviedo printed that testimony three times. Modern chemistry of Ocotea quixos, the Amazonian ishpingo whose dried cupules are still its commercial product, matches the description — and the same pages carry the killing at Cajamarca and the nine hundred Andean dead on one crossing to Quito.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/canela-de-quito",
    "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html",
    "dateModified": "2026-08-17",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Historia general y natural de las Indias, islas y tierra-firme del mar Oceano, tercera parte, tomo IV - the text of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=sPhWiXIS3HMC&pg=PA271"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Variability of the Chemical Composition of the Essential Oil from the Amazonian Ishpingo Species (Ocotea quixos)",
        "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8272037/"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Chemical and Enantioselective Analysis of the Essential Oils from Different Morphological Structures of Ocotea quixos (Lam.) Kosterm.",
        "url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8540073/"
      }
    ],
    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "La canela de Quito — the Amazonian spice the Spanish record described by its cupules"
  }
}