plant

Nutmeg

Myristica fragrans

Origin

Banda Islands, Maluku, Indonesia

The smell

Warm, woody, slightly sweet and heady. Spicy and narcotic in large quantities.

Key quality

Antimicrobial, analgesic. Myristicin is psychoactive at high doses.

Historical use

Nutmeg was so valuable in the 17th century that the Dutch massacred and displaced the Banda Islanders to secure a global monopoly.

Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons