Clove

A spice with an imperial past. Cloves are the unopened flower buds of a tree that once grew nowhere on earth but five small volcanic islands of the Moluccas, and for centuries they were traded at more than their weight in gold. Officials of the Han court held cloves in the mouth before addressing the emperor, so their breath might be worthy of him; Magellan's crews died by the hundred to bring a single shipload home, and the one ship that returned paid for the whole expedition. Prized as much for medicine as for the table, the clove has long been used to warm the body through and quicken the circulation, to kindle vitality and the digestion, and for its strong antiseptic and cleansing virtue — a small dark bud that warms, revives and steadies through times of exhaustion. In the hermetic ledger it answers to Jupiter — the greater benefic, the planet of abundance, expansion and warmth of spirit — and its signature is the glowing coal: the warmth at the center of the feast, the bud that moved empires. Fire and fragrance, sealed in a collector's vessel.