Boswellia sacra
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Somali frankincense ( Boswellia sacra ), illustration from Koehler's Medicinal Plants 1887 |
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Boswellia sacra is a species of plant that belongs to the balsam tree family(Burseraceae). German names are "Somalischer Weihrauch" or "Arabischer Weihrauch".
distribution
Boswellia sacra grows in Somalia , Oman and Yemen . It only thrives in arid areas. It is also grown in a few other countries.
description
Boswellia sacra grows as a small, heavily branched tree with thick branches that sheds deciduous trees in the dry season and reaches heights of about 4 to 5 meters or a little more. The gray-brownish bark is paper-like and flakes off.
The alternate and stalked leaves at the branch ends are pinnate unpaired with up to 15-17 leaflets . The rachis is hairy and angular. The more or less softly hairy and almost sessile to sessile leaflets are entire or notched to serrate. The foremost leaflet is always the largest.
Axillary and racemose , sometimes slightly hairy, loose inflorescences are formed at the branch ends. The small, hermaphrodite and star-shaped, stalked flowers are five-fold with a double flower envelope . The five spreading, egg-shaped petals are whitish, greenish-white, light yellow or pale pink. There are two circles with five short stamens each. The Upper constant ovary relatively short, thick stylus with spherical, capitate stigma is yellow to red of a meaty, discus surrounded. The flowering time is usually in April.
A small, triangular to pentagonal, -part and obovate, multi-seeded pseudo capsule fruit with stylus remains is formed.
ingredients
The gum resin incense contains 50 to 70% resin substances. Its main components are the β-boswellic acids . 20% is made up of mucilage and 4–8% from essential oil. Furthermore Incensol included.
use
Boswellia sacra provides slow-burning incense. In contrast to the other types of frankincense, the incense obtained in Somalia does not smell as strongly lemon-like. The resin color of the incense is deep honey yellow, the grains are usually 2 to 5 mm in size. As with the other types of frankincense, a subtle “basic smell” only appears after a while.
The gum resin frankincense is called as a drug olibanum or gum olibanum , rarely " gum resina olibanum". The drug is no longer registered in pharmaceutical terms and there is currently no Europe-wide approval for a product that contains boswellia. Hildegard von Bingen recommended the application z. B. against hearing loss.
literature
- Klaus D. Christof & Renate Haass: Incense the scent of heaven: The scent of heaven. Röll, Dettelbach 2006, ISBN 3-89754-252-8 , ISBN 978-3-89754-252-5 , limited preview in the Google book search.
Web links
- SEPASAL data sheet ( Memento from August 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- Information on medicinal plants at awl.ch.
- Boswellia sacra inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Thulin, M., 1998. Retrieved May 3, 2014.
- Frankincense (Boswellia sacra) on ayublab.com (many pictures).
Individual evidence
- ^ Matthias Melzig, Eberhard Teuscher, Ulrike Lindequist: Biogenic drugs: A textbook of pharmaceutical biology. 6th edition, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8047-2073-0 , pp. 444–445.