Carmufellic Acid obtained in colourless crystals, C₁₂H₂₀O₁₆, in 1851 by Muspratt and Danson after digesting an aqueous extract of cloves with nitric acid, is a product of this treatment and not a natural constituent of cloves.
Cloves contain a considerable proportion of gum; also a tannic acid not yet particularly examined.
Production and Commerce—Of late years the principal locality for the production of cloves has been the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba on the east coast of Africa, which until very recently were capable of producing a maximum crop of 10½ millions of pounds in a single season. On the 15th April 1872, Zanzibar was visited by a hurricane of extraordinary violence, by which about five-sixths of the clove-trees in the island were destroyed; and although the plantations are being renewed, many years must elapse before the crop can resume its former importance. Pemba, which is distant from Zanzibar 25 miles, and produced about half as much of the spice as that island, did not appreciably suffer from the storm.
The crop on these islands fluctuates, a good year alternating with a bad one. This is partly shown in the imports of Bombay, the great mart of Zanzibar produce, which have been as follows:—
| 1869-70 | 1870-71 | 1871-72 | 1872-73 |
| 45,642 cwt. | 21,968 cwt. | 43,891 cwt. | 25,185 cwt. |
The quantity of cloves shipped from Bombay to the United Kingdom is comparatively small, being in 1871-72, 3279 cwt.; in 1872-73, 3271 cwt.
The imports of cloves to the United Kingdom are from one million to four million pounds annually.
Cloves are also largely shipped direct from Zanzibar to the United States and Hamburg. A small amount is taken in native vessels to the Red Sea ports; these are packed in raw hides. Those for the European and American markets are shipped in mat bags made of split cocoa-nut leaf.
The clove trade of the Moluccas has been for many years in the hands of the Dutch Government, which, by its restrictive policy, assumed practically the position of growers, disposing of their produce through the Netherlands Trading Company at auctions held in Holland twice a year. This system having been abolished in 1872, has proved disastrous to the trade it was designed to protect, and to such a degree that the produce of cloves in the Moluccas is but a tenth of what it was in the early days of their intercourse with Europe. The crop of the four islands, Amboyna, Haruku, Saparua, and Nusalaut, the only Moluccas in which the tree is cultivated, was reckoned in 1854 as 510,912 lb.
The export of cloves from Java in 1871 was 1397 peculs[1094] (186,226 lb.). The French island of Réunion which from 1825 to 1849 used to produce annually as much as 800,000 kilogrammes (1,764,571 lb.), now yields almost none, owing chiefly to the frequent hurricanes.