Herb. No. 161 · Burseraceae
Southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa — Boswellia of limestone slopes.
Native · West Asia · Africa
Native Also grown
LegalGentleplant
Frankincense
Boswellia sacra
The tears of a desert tree — temple smoke, and a boswellic-acid joint folklore in a resin that should be farmed, not stripped.
Frankincense is the dried oleoresin of Boswellia, tapped from arid trees of Oman, Yemen, and the Horn of Africa. Temple use is older than the joint capsule. Traditional internal use is as a bitter anti-inflammatory. Buy traced, cultivated, or well-managed resin. This plate is incense and a labeled extract — not a wild-gouged trunk.
Flavor
Pine, lemon, church. A chew of resin is bitter-pine; a capsule has no flavor on purpose.
Parts used
Dried resin
Helpful
- A real resin tradition
- Incense that is the plant
Cautions
- Over-tapping wild trees
- Not a temperate garden
- Extracts vary