Aloe tree , eagle tree , pun tree , or paradise tree - aromatic wood , hard, resinous, greasy to the touch, flammable and when burned, spreading a pleasant smell of benzene, usually obtained from trees of the genus Aquilaria , for example, of the family of malariaaccens ( Thymelaeaceae ). Of particular importance are the fungal areas of the trunk, as they are more saturated with resinous substances.
In East Asia, it was considered a very expensive medicinal material and was highly valued in the East ( India , China , Southeast Asia , the Middle East ) as a smoking substance, sometimes still used in religious rituals. It was also used in perfumery and as a raw material for creating beads, jewelry, furniture inlays. The first mention of it is found in the Bible , ( Numbers 24: 6).
Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was very rarely brought to Europe. It emits a foul-smelling milk juice, so sharp and burning that it gets into the eye and causes rapid inflammation and can even lead to blindness, as a result of which the natives called this tree a blind tree. Most of all, the people who cut this tree are at risk of harming themselves with poisonous juice. Taken inside, this juice quickly causes diarrhea and vomiting.
Scarlet tree ( lat. Aquilaria agallocha ) can occasionally be used in cooking. So, Paula Wolfert in his book “Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco” (1973) mentions it as aga wood and names it as one of the many possible ingredients in the Moroccan spice mix known as ras al-khanut . In Morocco, a scarlet tree is used under the Arabic name oud kameira [1] .
The aloe tree is used in Traditional Tibetan medicine , for example, it is part of the well-known herbal collection Agar-35.
Notes
- ↑ The Oxford Companion to Food / Alan Davidson, Tom Jaine. - Oxford University Press , 2014 .-- S. 207. - ISBN 978-0-19-104072-6 .
Literature
- Scarlet tree // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
- Scarlet tree // Great Soviet Encyclopedia : [in 30 vol.] / Ch. ed. A.M. Prokhorov . - 3rd ed. - M .: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969-1978.