The clove's powerful warm scent gave it a protective role in European folk practice: an orange stuck all over with cloves, the pomander, was carried against infection and evil smells, especially in time of plague, and hung in wardrobes to keep off moths and to sweeten the air, a use recorded here as folk history. In the language of correspondence the clove is a warm, protective and attracting spice, burned as incense to draw money and love and to drive away hostility and negativity, its meanings read from its heat, its penetrating fragrance and its long value as a treasure of trade. A small nail-shaped bud, the clove carries a symbolism of protection, warmth and worth.
The Dutch monopoly on cloves was even more ruthlessly enforced than that on nutmeg: for a period the Dutch East India Company deliberately destroyed clove trees on every island except Ambon to keep supply, and price, under total control, until the French administrator and botanist Pierre Poivre managed to smuggle clove seedlings out in the 1770s and establish plantations on Mauritius and Reunion, breaking the monopoly and eventually seeding the clove industry that today makes Zanzibar and nearby Pemba, off the coast of East Africa, among the world's leading producers.