Until modern times, cloves grew only on a few islands in the Maluku Islands (historically called the Spice Islands)

In the sev­en­teenth cen­tury ^1)↓ as now, many fam­i­lies in north­ern Maluku would spend har­vest sea­son knock­ing clus­ters of pink buds off their clove trees. Chil­dren spread the buds on flat, round trays wo­ven out of palm leaves, and adults hiked them up onto the nipa-palm roof of the cot­tage to dry. Af­ter a few days be­ing toasted by the sun and ca­ressed by the breeze, the buds shrivel and blacken into the round-topped nails that we toss into mulled wine. If you are sail­ing down­wind from one of the smaller is­lands of Maluku in the July clove-dry­ing sea­son, you can some­times smell Christ­mas be­fore you can even see land. […]
 The big­gest con­sumer of In­done­sia’s cloves ^2)↓ nowa­days are In­done­sia’s smok­ers, who like their cig­a­rettes scented with the spice, not least be­cause it dou­bles as an anaes­thetic and smoothes the pas­sage of tox­ins into the lungs. The coun­try smokes 223 bil­lion clove cig­a­rettes, or kreteks, ev­ery year, thir­teen times more than or­di­nary ‘white’ cig­a­rettes…
 Eliz­a­beth Pisani, In­done­sia Etc.

Cloves are the aromatic flower buds of a tree in the family Myrtaceae, Syzygium aromaticum. They are native to the Maluku Islands in Indonesia, and are commonly used as a spice. Cloves are commercially harvested primarily in Indonesia, India, Madagascar, Zanzibar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
 
Archeologists have found cloves in a ceramic vessel in Syria, with evidence that dates the find to within a few years of 1721 BC. In the third century BC, a Chinese leader in the Han Dynasty required those who addressed him to chew cloves to freshen their breath. Cloves were traded by Muslim sailors and merchants during the Middle Ages in the profitable Indian Ocean trade, the clove trade is also mentioned by Ibn Battuta and even famous Arabian Nights characters such Sinbad the Sailor are known to have bought and sold cloves from India.
 Until modern times, cloves grew only on a few islands in the Maluku Islands (historically called the Spice Islands), including Bacan, Makian, Moti, Ternate, and Tidore. In fact, the clove tree that experts believe is the oldest in the world, named Afo, is on Ternate. The tree is between 350 and 400 years old. Tourists are told that seedlings from this very tree were stolen by a Frenchman named Poivre in 1770, transferred to France, and then later to Zanzibar, which was once the world’s largest producer of cloves.
 Until cloves were grown outside of the Maluku Islands, they were traded like oil, with an enforced limit on exportation. As the Dutch East India Company consolidated its control of the spice trade in the 17th century, they sought to gain a monopoly in cloves as they had in nutmeg. However, „unlike nutmeg and mace, which were limited to the minute Bandas, clove trees grew all over the Moluccas, and the trade in cloves was way beyond the limited policing powers of the corporation.”
 en.wikipedia