Lol wrote:
On with my garden inventory - after close inspection I find that I
have a Laurel tree - a whopper. Google tells me that it is a great
source of Bay leaves (which sounds a bit silly - Laurel trees have
bay leaves - but I concluded that Bay was probably a Laurel
subspecies. My inital irritation at having spent fortunes on bay
leaves for my stews and curries in the past, subsided when I
inpected
the leaves on the tree and found they were far bigger and fatter -
and maybe even greener than the ones I use for cooking.

Is this something to do with the age of the tree (it is at least 12
years old, and probably much older) - do I need to take a cutting
and
grow a smaller bush to be able to harvest the smaller finer leaves
?
- Or is my Bay tree really just a laurel.
[...]

It's a name problem. The original name for bay was laurel (as in
victors' laurel wreaths); but the Victorians called the unrelated
_Prunus laurocerasus_ "cherry laurel" because of its berries, and
hence just "laurel". It's slightly poisonous, and the leaves smell
unpleasant to me when crushed. What you describe sounds like the
undesirable one: rather big shiny leaves, a few shades lighter in
colour than bay leaves, a rather mound-forming shape.

Older cookery books can be misleading by using "laurel" for "bay";
the original 1861 Mrs Beeton is, in my opinion, plain wrong. The 1906
edition is clearer, and says the "cherry-laurel" is sometimes used
with discretion to give an almond-like flavour -- I don't think I
ever would, though.

--
Mike.