The fruit has an aromatic odor, and its taste combines that of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves; hence its common name of allspice. The fruit of Eugenia acris is used for pimento.
The trunk is of a grey color, smooth and shining, and altogether destitute of bark. It is luxuriantly clothed with leaves of a deep green, somewhat like those of the bay tree, and these leaves are, in the months of July and August, beautifully contrasted and relieved by an exuberance of white flowers. The leaves yield by distillation a delicate odoriferous oil, which is said to be sometimes passed off for oil of cloves.
The berries are gathered before they are ripe, and spread on a terrace, exposed to the sun for about a week, during which time they lose their green color, and acquire that reddish brown tint which renders them marketable. Some planters kiln-dry them. Like many of the minor productions of the tropics, pimento is exceedingly uncertain, and perhaps a very plenteous crop occurs but once in five years.
In 1800 there were 12,759 bags and 610 casks of pimento imported from Jamaica; in 1824 there were 33,308 bags and 599 casks shipped from the island; in 1829 the quantity exported was 6,069,127 lbs.
In the year ending October 1843, the export of pimento from Jamaica was 29,322 bags and 156 casks; in the year ending October 1844, 12,055 bags and 88 casks; in the year ending October 1845, 233 casks, valued at 30s. each, and 59,494 bags, valued at 20s.
From 1st January to 1st August, 1851, 128,277 lbs. pimento were shipped from the port of Montego Bay, Jamaica.
There was a very considerable pimento plantation made in Tobago, some years ago, by a Mr. Franklin, but it was abandoned by his sons, that they might attend the more exclusively to sugar culture.
Jamaica exported nearly two millions of pounds of pimento less, in the three years ending 1848, than she did in the three previous to the emancipation of the slaves. The number of pounds shipped annually, in these periods, is shown by the following figures:—
| Year. | lbs. |
| 1830 | 5,560,620 |
| 1831 | 3,172,320 |
| 1832 | 4,024,800 |
| 1846 | 2,997,060 |
| 1847 | 2,800,140 |
| 1848 | 5,231,908 |
Pimento is imported into this country in bags of about 100 lbs. each. The imports have been:—