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Balsam
Balsam is the resinous exudate (or sap) which forms on certain kinds of trees and shrubs. Balsam (from Latin balsamum "gum of the balsam tree", ultimately from Semitic, Aramaic ''busma'', Arabic ''balsam'' and Hebrew ''basam'', "spice", "perfume") owes its name to the biblical Balm of Gilead. Chemistry Balsam is a solution of plant-specific resins in plant-specific solvents (essential oils). Such resins can include resin acids, esters, or alcohols. The exudate is a mobile to highly viscous liquid and often contains crystallized resin particles. Over time and as a result of other influences the exudate loses its liquidizing components or gets chemically converted into a solid material (i.e. by autoxidation). Some authors require balsams to contain benzoic or cinnamic acid or their esters. Plant resins are sometimes classified according to other plant constituents in the mixture, for example as: * pure resins (guaiac, hashish), * gum-resins (containing gums/polysaccharides) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Balm Of Gilead
Balm of Gilead was a rare perfume used medicinally, that was mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and named for the region of Gilead, where it was produced. The expression stems from William Tyndale's language in the King James Bible of 1611, and has come to signify a universal cure in figurative speech. The tree or shrub producing the balm is commonly identified as ''Commiphora gileadensis''. However, some botanical scholars have concluded that the actual source was a terebinth tree in the genus ''Pistacia''.Groom (1981) History Hebrew Bible In the Bible, balsam is designated by various names: (''bosem''), (''besem''), (''ẓori''), (''nataf''), which all differ from the terms used in rabbinic literature. After having cast Joseph into a pit, his brothers noticed a caravan on its way from Gilead to Egypt, "with their camels bearing spicery, and balm, and myrrh" (Gen. ). When Jacob dispatched his embassy into Egypt, his present to the unknown ruler included "a little balm" (Gen. ) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essential Oil
An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile (easily evaporated at normal temperatures) chemical compounds from plants. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils, aetheroleum, or simply as the oil of the plant from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove. An essential oil is essential in the sense that it contains the essence of the plant's fragrance—the characteristic fragrance of the plant from which it is derived. The term "essential" used here does ''not'' mean indispensable or usable by the human body, as with the terms essential amino acid or essential fatty acid, which are so called because they are nutritionally required by a living organism. Essential oils are generally extracted by distillation, often by using steam. Other processes include expression, solvent extraction, '' sfumatura'', absolute oil extraction, resin tapping, wax embedding, and cold pressing. They are used in perfumes, cosmetics, soaps, air ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resins
In polymer chemistry and materials science, resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant or synthetic origin that is typically convertible into polymers. Resins are usually mixtures of organic compounds. This article focuses on naturally occurring resins. Plants secrete resins for their protective benefits in response to injury. The resin protects the plant from insects and pathogens. Resins confound a wide range of herbivores, insects, and pathogens, while the volatile phenolic compounds may attract benefactors such as parasitoids or predators of the herbivores that attack the plant. Composition Most plant resins are composed of terpenes. Specific components are alpha-pinene, beta-pinene, delta-3 carene, and sabinene, the monocyclic terpenes limonene and terpinolene, and smaller amounts of the tricyclic sesquiterpenes, longifolene, caryophyllene, and delta-cadinene. Some resins also contain a high proportion of resin acids. Rosins on the other hand are less v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resin
In polymer chemistry and materials science, resin is a solid or highly viscous substance of plant or synthetic origin that is typically convertible into polymers. Resins are usually mixtures of organic compounds. This article focuses on naturally occurring resins. Plants secrete resins for their protective benefits in response to injury. The resin protects the plant from insects and pathogens. Resins confound a wide range of herbivores, insects, and pathogens, while the volatile phenolic compounds may attract benefactors such as parasitoids or predators of the herbivores that attack the plant. Composition Most plant resins are composed of terpenes. Specific components are alpha-pinene, beta-pinene, delta-3 carene, and sabinene, the monocyclic terpenes limonene and terpinolene, and smaller amounts of the tricyclic sesquiterpenes, longifolene, caryophyllene, and delta-cadinene. Some resins also contain a high proportion of resin acids. Rosins on the other hand are less ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musk
Musk (Persian: مشک, ''Mushk'') is a class of aromatic substances commonly used as base notes in perfumery. They include glandular secretions from animals such as the musk deer, numerous plants emitting similar fragrances, and artificial substances with similar odors. ''Musk'' was a name originally given to a substance with a strong odor obtained from a gland of the musk deer. The substance has been used as a popular perfume fixative since ancient times and is one of the most expensive animal products in the world. The name originates from the Late Greek μόσχος 'moskhos', from Persian 'mushk', similar to Sanskrit मुष्क muṣka ("testicle"), derived from Proto-Indo-European noun ''múh₂s'' meaning "mouse". The deer gland was thought to resemble a scrotum. It is applied to various plants and animals of similar smell (e.g. muskox) and has come to encompass a wide variety of aromatic substances with similar odors, despite their often differing chemical structure ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utah Resin
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its west by Nevada. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin. Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shellac
Shellac () is a resin secreted by the female lac bug on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes and dissolved in alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish. Shellac functions as a tough natural primer, sanding sealant, tannin-blocker, odour-blocker, stain, and high-gloss varnish. Shellac was once used in electrical applications as it possesses good insulation qualities and it seals out moisture. Phonograph and 78 rpm gramophone records were made of it until they were replaced by vinyl long-playing records from 1948 onwards. From the time it replaced oil and wax finishes in the 19th century, shellac was one of the dominant wood finishes in the western world until it was largely replaced by nitrocellulose lacquer in the 1920s and 1930s. Etymology ''Shellac'' comes from ''shell'' and ''lac'', a calque of French , 'lac in thin pieces', later , 'gum lac'. Most European langua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asphaltite
Asphaltite (also known as uintahite, asphaltum, gilsonite or oil sands) is a naturally occurring soluble solid hydrocarbon, a form of asphalt (or bitumen) with a relatively high melting temperature. Its large-scale production occurs in the Uintah Basin of Utah and Colorado, United States. Although the substance has been historically mined in the Uintah Basin, resources are being discovered and mined more recently in other countries such as Colombia and Iran. Gilsonite is mined in underground shafts and resembles shiny black obsidian. Discovered in the 1860s, it was first marketed as a lacquer, electrical insulator, and waterproofing compound approximately 25 years later by Samuel H. Gilson. History Gilsonite was discovered in the 1860s. By 1888 Samuel H. Gilson had started a company to mine the substance, but soon discovered the vein was on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation. Under great political pressure Congress removed some from the reservation on May 24, 1888 to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polysaccharide
Polysaccharides (), or polycarbohydrates, are the most abundant carbohydrates found in food. They are long chain polymeric carbohydrates composed of monosaccharide units bound together by glycosidic linkages. This carbohydrate can react with water (hydrolysis) using amylase enzymes as catalyst, which produces constituent sugars (monosaccharides, or oligosaccharides). They range in structure from linear to highly branched. Examples include storage polysaccharides such as starch, glycogen and galactogen and structural polysaccharides such as cellulose and chitin. Polysaccharides are often quite heterogeneous, containing slight modifications of the repeating unit. Depending on the structure, these macromolecules can have distinct properties from their monosaccharide building blocks. They may be amorphous or even insoluble in water. When all the monosaccharides in a polysaccharide are the same type, the polysaccharide is called a homopolysaccharide or homoglycan, but when more t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In Maxine N. Lurie and Marc Mappen (eds.) ''Encyclopedia of New Jersey'', Rutgers University Press, . Amber is used in jewelry and has been used as a healing agent in folk medicine. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Amber occurring in coal seams is also called resinite, and the term ''ambrite'' is applied to that found specifically within New Zealand coal seams. Etymology The English word ''amber'' derives from Arabic (ultimately from Middle Persian ''ambar'') via Middle Latin ''ambar'' and Middle French ''ambre''. The word was adopted in Middle English in the 14th century ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kava Kava
Kava or kava kava (''Piper methysticum'': Latin 'pepper' and Latinized Greek 'intoxicating') is a crop of the Pacific Islands. The name ''kava'' is from Tongan and Marquesan, meaning 'bitter'; other names for kava include ''ʻawa'' (Hawaiʻi), ''ʻava'' (Samoa), ''yaqona'' or ''yagona'' ( Fiji), ''sakau'' ( Pohnpei), ''seka'' (Kosrae), and ''malok'' or ''malogu'' (parts of Vanuatu). Kava is consumed for its sedating effects throughout the Pacific Ocean cultures of Polynesia, including Hawaii and Vanuatu, Melanesia, some parts of Micronesia, such as Pohnpei and Kosrae, and the Philippines. The root of the plant is used to produce a drink with sedative, anesthetic, and euphoriant properties. Its active ingredients are called kavalactones. A systematic review done by the British nonprofit Cochrane concluded it was likely to be more effective than placebo at treating short-term anxiety. Moderate consumption of kava in its traditional form, i.e., as a water-based suspensio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jalap
Jalap is a cathartic drug, largely obsolete in Western medicine, consisting of the tuberous roots of ''Ipomoea purga'', a convolvulaceous plant growing on the eastern declivities of the Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico at an elevation of above sea level, more especially about the neighbourhood of Chiconquiaco on the eastern slope of the Cofre de Perote in the state of Veracruz. Jalap has been known in Europe since the beginning of the 17th century, and derives its name from the city of Xalapa in Mexico, near which it grows, but its botanical source was not accurately determined until 1829, when Dr. J. R. Coxe of Philadelphia published a description. The ordinary drug is distinguished in commerce as Vera Cruz jalap, from the name of the port whence it is shipped. Jalap has been cultivated for many years in India, chiefly at Ootacamund, and grows there as easily as a yam, often producing clusters of tubers weighing over 9 lb; but these, as they differ in appearance from the commer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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