One of the reasons to love fall weather and the upcoming winter, is the smell of many spices wafting from the kitchen, especially around the holidays.

Thinking about this, I wondered just how much we really know about some of the most popular spices, like allspice, nutmeg, mace, anise, cloves, coriander, caraway, and mustard?

Well, of course, they all come from plants (or trees), and here's the skinny on the some of the wonderful aromas we often take for granted:

A Fresh Look At Some Common Old World Spices

Not to be confused with the pepper family is this familiar kitchen spice -- allspice. Technically, its real name is "pimento" (aka Jamaica pepper).

Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but this fact came as a revelation to me -- in no way did I associate pimentos with allspice. Allspice receives its name because the flavor resembles a mixture of cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

Allspice is the unripe fruit of an evergreen tree that has been cultivated for generations commercially from the West Indies, although it was also found in Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Mexico too.

There is a difference between the Mexican allspice and the Jamaican variety, as the Mexican one is less aromatic and not as used as the other variety.

The usual height of the three is twenty or thirty feet, but it sometimes grows in non-commercial areas to forty feet. The white blossoms show up daintily. One tree will produce as much as one hundred and fifty pounds of raw fruit, yielding about one pounds of dried pimento.

A delicate oil is distilled from the leaves, which is sometimes mistaken for oil of cloves. The berries are gathered before they are ripe, as they are then at the height of their fragrance and flavor. They are about the size of peppercorns.

In the old days, they were spread out in the sun on terraced floors for about a week, during which time they changed in color from green to reddish brown. Some planters dried them in kilns, but the product is not so good as when the berries are sun-dried.

The crop is a rather difficult one to grow as it is so uncertain. A really good crop may occur only one in four or five years.

The oil of pimento, which gives the fruit its fragrance and flavor, is distilled from the berries, and has historically been used as a remedy for toothaches.

Note: The pimento tree is a relative of the myrtle.

Nutmeg and mace can't be discussed without understanding that they both come from the same large peach-like fruit of the nutmeg tree. It's a native tree of the Netherlands, and the Indies. Most of the nutmegs come from the fragrant myristica of the West Indies.

The male and female flowers which appear on different plants are yellowish white and bell-shaped, and these develop into a curious and interesting fruit and shaped something like a round pear. When ripe, it is a bright golden yellow.

The outer part of the fruit is thick and fleshy, and sweet and hard, not unlike candied fruit in texture. It is eaten as a sweetmeat in the countries where it is grown.

How Mace Is Extracted From The Nutmeg

When the fruit is ripe, the outer covering splits into two halves. Now, mace, is the curious network of bright, yellowish red, covering the shell of the nut itself. The more brilliant in color the aril is, the better the flavor of the mace.

This is dried for a short time, but if it is dried too much, a great part of the flavor goes off in the evaporation of the moisture, and it becvomes so brittle that it is broken up in packing for the market.

On the other hand, it must be dried sufficiently, or it will ferment after packing, and be ruined.

The mace always brings a higher price than the nutmeg it surrounds, as each fruit contains some of this more delicate membrane, or aril. The amount varying in the different fruits.

Getting To the Nutmeg Portion of The Tree

Having removed the aril, we come to shell of the nut, which is larger and harder than a filbert. If broken when gathered, the nut, which fits very closely inside, would be damaged. The unbroken nut is therefore dried int he sun and afterward by fire heat, which causes the kernel to shrink up so much that it will rattle if the shell is shaken. The shell can then be broken and the nut extracted.

The nuts are next soaked in sea water and lime several times and dried. Sometimes they are just coated with lime. This is supposed to preserve the substance and the flavor of the nut. The nutmegs are then ready to be packed and sent to market.

We get oil of mace by extracting it from the aril, and essential oil of nutmegs, used largely in soap manufacture, by distilling it from the seed of the nutmeg fruit.

Nutmeg trees generally flower for the first time about the seventh year, but if the first flowering can be postponed until the ninth year -- the tree is much more valuable and will bear better. Some trees bear as many as ten thousand nutmegs a year, but most nutmeg trees bear only three of four thousand fruits.

Note: I don't know about any of you, but I'm thinking three of four thousand of any fruits, would be a lot to handle if growing non-commercially.

Cloves are the unopened flower buds of the clove tree, a member and the myrtle family. The tree on which they grow is from twenty to forty feet high and the trunk divides into large branches which are covered with a smooth gray bark.

The leaves are long and lance-shaped and bright green in color. The leaves, flowers, and bark all possess the odor peculiar to cloves. The clove tree is a native of the Maluku Islands, however, they are now largely cultivated trees of Guiana, Brazil, most of the West Indies, and Zanzibar.

Cloves have been for centuries a valued ingredient of the finest perfumes and still are used in that industry. In ancient China courtiers approaching the throne of the emperor were ordered to hold a clove in the mouth, so that their breaths might be sweet. The word "cloves" is from the French word, clou, or nail, which is what they resemble when dried.

The flowers, which grow in bunches at the ends of the branches are of a delicate peach-blossom reddish tint. As the flower-bud develops, it first turns yellow and then red. At this stage, before the flower-buds have opened they are beaten from the tree.

After being dried, first by the heat of wood fires and then in the sun, they are the brown cloves of commerce.

Sometimes the drying is done in the sun alone. If the flowers are allowed to remain on the tree, ripe berries develop resembling olives in shape. They are of a dark red color, and each berry contains one oval-shaped dark seed.

The seeds are sometimes gathered and dried, but at this stage the fragrant quality of the clove has been largely lost.

The oil of cloves, which gives the flavor and fragrance to this spice, forms about one-sixth of the total weight of the clove. It is obtained by distillation with water. Oil of cloves is used medicinally as a flavoring in various medicines and for certain medicinal effects in itself. It is also a familiar ingredient of many toothache remedies.

Oil of cloves also yield a colorless liquid called eugenol, which is usually employed as an antiseptic, and to some extent in perfume where it imitates the fragrance of carnations. Eugenol yields vanillam or artificial vanilla, used very widely in the making of so-called vanilla extracts.

The clove tree is a beautiful plant. Sir Thomas Raffles, who was governor of Java when that island was British at the beginning of the nineteenth century, declared that:

"Clove trees as an avenue to a residence are perhaps unrivalled -- their noble height, the beauty of their form, the luxuriance of their foliage, and above all, the spicy fragrance with which they perfume the air produce exquisite pleasure."

Caraway and coriander both belong to the parsley plant family. The caraway seeds are the fragrant carpels of the common caraway plant that is often found growing wild, although in such places it is only a naturalized escape from cultivation.

The coriander seed, used very much for flavoring in certain countries, like Germany -- is the fruit of the coriander plant, an annual belonging to the unbelliferous (parsley) plant family too. However, here in the United States and throughout Mexico, we are more familiar with corriander as cilantro.  Corriander is the seed of the cilantro plant.

It is a native of the south of Europe and of the East, but has been a good deal cultivated in other countries. Large quantities of coriander seeds are produced in India.

Anise is another plant of the parsley family, from which we obtain aniseed (or aniseseed) used so much as a condiment. It gives relish to food and is also used as a medicine, and as a flavoring for sweets.

It is a native of Egypt, and is cultivated in Spain and Germany, as well as Syria, Chile, and Mexico.

For two hundred years, attempts were made to cultivate it commercially in places like England, but the summers are often not warm enough to ripen the seeds, which are the part used as a condiment. The plant however, is grown in home gardens for use as garnishes and seasoning. It is a near relative of the burnet saxifrage.

Mustard, next to pepper, is America's most popular spice. The plant is of the cruciferae plant family, whose members all have cross-shaped four-petalled blooms. The family yields many valuable vegetables, such as cabbage, cauliflower, kale, turnips, radishes, and water cress. It is the sulphur in the cruciferae that yields its pungency.

The mustard of commerce is familiar in three ways -- as a seed, in ground form (technically known as mustard flour), and in a prepared form of sauce (combined with other ingredients).

There are two varieties of mustard seed -- brown and yellow. The yellow is the so-called "English" type, and the brown is very familiar in many prepared mustards.

Ground mustard for cooking is usually of the yellow variety, however.

Mustard is cultivated in many countries today, especially throughout Europe and Asia.

Peppermint is a plant widely distributed in temperate regions and is found growing wild in some places.

It has been cultivated for the well-known essential oil used so much in flavoring sweets and in disguising unpleasant medicines.

The peculiar odor of the oil is due to the menthol, or peppermint-camphor, it contains.  Growing peppermint is one of the newest agricultural operations giving a boom to India's farmers.