Name

Pimento, Allspice - Pimenta dioica

Introduction:

Pimento is a tropical hardwood tree from the family Myrtaceae. Pimento is commonly found on wooded hillsides and in upland pastures, often on limestone, up to an altitude of 1,100 meters.  Pimento grows to 15 m tall.

Pimento wood, berries and leaves are important ingredient in "Jerk" seasoning.

Parishes Found

St. Andrew, St. Catherine, Clarendon, Manchester, St. Elizabeth, Westmoreland, St. James, Trelawny, St. Ann 

Description:

Bark:

• Cream, brown and tan mottled, smooth, twisting lumpy surface, large sheets of peeling bark;
• Blaze 2-3 mm thick;
• Slash with outer green line, inner band light brown, short fibrous.

Leaves:

• Opposite, rarely a few sub-opposite;
• Petiolate, blunt or rounded at apex, oblong to elliptical;
• Mostly 6-20 cm long, thin-coriaceous, the glandular dots more or less pellucid;
• When crushed strongly aromatic odour of pimento (allspice).

Flowers: 

• Inflorescence paniculate, 4-12 cm long, many flowered;
• peduncle slender, .5-1.2mm thick;
• calyx usually 4-lobed, rounded, the lobes nearly as long as, to longer than wide, dintinct;
• petals white, 1.5mm long, quickly deciduous;
• hypanthium smooth, puberulous, obconic, about 1.5mm long, wide-spreading at anthesis;
• Flowering July to August

Fruit:

• A fleshy berry, aromatic at all stages, more or less globose, 4 - 6.5mm in diameter;
• calyx-lobes thick, persistent on the fruits;
• Fruiting August to September.

Uses:

Fruit used dried as spice; wood, when used as timber, used as telephone poles, cart shafts, posts and firewood; young saplings are also used as walking sticks.