This article is a miscellany of the odds and ends of other trees I have encountered while looking for those main four groups. Some are called dragon's blood in their areas and some are just bloodwoods. These articles are going to be lists of the various plants with a few details on each, not exhaustive monographs on each plant. The article on Dracaena will be more in-depth, as there is a lot of information on those trees.
A surprising number of these trees grow in swampy or frequently-flooded areas. The pigments may have an antibacterial and antifungal effect, helping to preserve the wood from rotting in the damp conditions. There are, of course, many, many other trees with red wood but I have tried to restrict this to those that have been compared to blood.
The mineral pigment red ochre or ruddle has been used by humans for a very long time. The earliest reliably-dated finds in human sites are from about 200,000 years ago in both Africa and Europe. Red ochre seems to have been used for a wide variety of purposes from rock paintings to decorating skeletons. Scholars often resort to the "it was religious" argument when they have no evidence for context or other theories for a practice by ancient humans. Some of that use of red ochre may have been religious but it should be noted that modern hunter-gatherers use red ochre for decoration, tanning animal hides and as an insect-repellent. Australians were using red ochre at least 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. There were underground red ochre mines in Australia at least 32,000 years ago. Red ochre continued to be mined from several locations and was traded throughout the history of Australia.
Red ochre is a relatively dull pigment compared to the bright and deep reds seen in many plant dyes. We cannot be sure how long these plant pigments have been used by humans as even the most stable of them tend to break down over thousands of years. We can be sure that these plants caught the eye of ancient humans just as they were used all over the world in large quantities throughout recorded history. The many plants that bleed red blood like a human would have been especially fascinating.
Cyrillaceae (Cyrilla family - no famous ones)
Cyrilla racemiflora was called bloodwood and beetwood in Jamaica because of the deep red colour of the bark and heartwood. It is also called leatherwood and red titi. Though Hough's American woods Part V from the USA records that the wood is "a delicate reddish-brown" and has a photo showing that it is sort of wood-coloured. Though others write that the wood is an attractive dark reddish-brown. The tree is one of many called iron wood (madera de hierro in Spanish) because of the hardness of the timber but Romeyn and Marjorie Hough wrote that it is also rather brittle and little used. It is said to degrade badly on seasoning and has mainly been used for charcoal.
Bloodwood, Cyrilla racemiflora
Photo: ©? Fabian Michelangeli, New York Botanical Garden.
Default Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Cyrilla racemiflora is very widespread, found from Brazil and Venezuela, throughout the Caribbean and Central America and up to the south-eastern USA. The species is very variable and because each time the botanists found another variety they thought it was a different species, it has been given at least 14 botanical names and probably more common names. One of its many names in Spanish is palo colorado, reddish wood. The family Cyrillaceae only has 8 accepted species, 7 in Cyrilla and one as Cliftonia monophylla.
Cyrilla racemiflora from
Curtis's Botanical Magazine (1824)
Puerto Rican amazon (Amazona vittata) in the Puerto Rican Zoo
Credit: Jose Almodovar
Credit: Jose Almodovar
Hypericaceae (St John's wort family)
Vismia cayennensis, showing red exudate. Mato Grosso, Brazil
Photo: Denise Sasaki from ColPlantA, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
© Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Default Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Vismia cayennensis French Guiana: bois-sang (= blood-wood), Guyana Creole: bloodwood. Orange latex from inner bark used against infections, fungus and itching. Also latex from fruit against yaws (bacterial infection with a type of Treponema) and leishmaniasis.
Vismia cayennensis flowers Photo: GH Shimizu from Flora do Brasil
Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License
Vismia ferruginea Brazil: lacre (Portuguese: sealing wax), capianga (Portuguese: steal with dexterity?). Red latex. Yellow sap turning orange. Rust-coloured (ferrugineous) latex. Used versus leishmaniasis. Wood very pale tan and pleasantly aromatic like a conifer.
Vismia gracilis (Vismia amazonica, Vismia glaziovii) Guyana Patamona: wa-ya-mak-yik, Brazil: lacre vermelho (Portuguese: red sealing wax). Copious resin production. Orange latex as others. Rusty latex.
Vismia guianensis French Guiana Creole: bois de sang, Guyana: bloodwood, fine-leaf bloodwood, small-leaf bloodwood, Brazil: lacre. Latex as purgative against itching, fungus, ulcers, sores, minor cuts and bruises, warts. This also has an orange latex from the inner bark. Also latex from fruit against yaws and leishmaniasis.
Vismia latifolia French Guiana Creole: bois de sang, Guyana Creole: bloodwood. Orange latex used as the other species.
Vismia macrophylla Guyana Creole: bloodwood, large-leaf bloodwood. Orange latex used as the other species.
Vismia macrophylla, showing orangey-red exudate. Mato Grosso, Brazil
Photo: Denise Sasaki from ColPlantA, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
© Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Vismia sandwithii British Guiana: Oralli. Same uses as given for Vismia macrophylla.
Vismia sessilifolia Guyana Creole: bloodwood. Same uses as given for Vismia macrophylla.
All the information above for the genus Vismia came from Medicinal Plants of the Guianas, unless it has its own hyperlink to a source.
Vismia laurentii is an African relative of the above species. Also used medicinally. As it was the first species for which I found photos I have included it here. What lovely pictures they are, too. The original description (with nothing but the botanical description) was not easy to find on the Biodiversity Heritage Library as they don't seem to have indexed this species at all.
Vismia laurentii Congo © David J Harris African Plants, A Photo Guide
Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
Vismia laurentii also has an orangey-red latex,
though not a huge amount. Congo © David J Harris
though not a huge amount. Congo © David J Harris
Harungana madagascariensis is in the same section of the St. John's wort family as Vismia, the tribe Vismieae. Not just found in Madagascar, it is common across tropical Africa and some African islands. Known in English as dragon's blood tree, also as blood tree, orange-milk tree, praying hands and haronga.
Madagascar: Gum used as a yellow dye. Madagascar: Leaves used against dysentery, diarrhoea, etc. Madagascar: Stem, leaves against liver complaints, sold in markets. Sierra Leone: Red "juice" from the leaves and stem bark used for stopping bleeding after miscarriage and childbirth. Used in Nyasaland as a dye and many uses in medicine. Contains anthraquinones, anthrones and xanthones, many of which are colourful chemicals.
Photo: © Martin Callmander from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
In 1922 the following description of Harungana madagascariensis was published in Madagascar: les bois de la forêt d'Analamazaotra:
The stem and root exude from incisions a brick-red gum-resin that has been mistakenly compared to dragon's-blood. The Malagasy people use this substance, in the cold state, against diverse diseases of the skin.In the original French:
La tige et la racine laissent exsuder par les incisions une gomme-résine de couleur rouge brique que l'on a comparée à tort au sang-dragon. Les Malgaches emploient cette substance, à l'état froid, contre diverse maladies de la peau.
Harungana madagascariensis bleeding, Pictures: © Matthew Walters
African Plants, A Photo Guide Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
Lythraceae (the purple loosestrife, pomegranate, henna and water chestnut family. But not that water chestnut, this is the Indian one that is totally unrelated to the Chinese one known from Chinese takeaway cuisine in Europe. Though the Indian one is also grown in parts of China. Trapa natans is a bit more definitive than the common name.)
Lagerstroemia speciosa as Lagerstroemia flos-reginae
Marianne North, India. For more on the painter, visit Kew.
© Board of Trustees, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
© Board of Trustees, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
Default Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Joseph Dalton Hooker wrote in his Himalayan Journals in 1854, about some mountains in Assam, east of Jyntea:
Swamps extend from the river to their base, and penetrate their valleys , which are extremely malarious: these forests are frequented by timber-cutters, who fell jarool (Lagerstrœmia Reginæ), a magnificent tree with red wood, which, though soft, is durable under water, and therefore in universal use for boat-building.
Lagerstroemia speciosa as Lagerstroemia reginae
Plants of the coast of Coromandel (1795) by William Roxburgh
Moraceae (mulberry and fig family)
Brosimum has some interesting medicinal and edible species. Several provide a latex that is drunk though it is not nutritious. Some are called palo de vaca (cow-tree) or leiteira (= milk jug or milkmaid); Brosimum galactodendron (= milk-tree), Brosimum lactescens (= milky), Brosimum potabile (= drinkable) and Brosimum utile (= useful).
Brosimum lactescens showing milky, drinkable latex and reddish wood.
Photo: Denise Sasaki from ColPlantA, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
© Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Brosimum rubescens also has white latex in live bark - opaque, abundant, gluey. Brazilian common names; leiteiro (Portuguese: milkman, in Mato Grosso), muirapiranga (Tupi: wood of red, in Amazonas). Several of these huge trees have red wood of which the most famous appears to be Brosimum rubescens. The original description of the tree from Brazil gives the local name as the Portuguese páo vermelho, scarlet wood. It has been called Bloodwood cacique (chief bloodwood), at least in Panama.
Brosimum rubescens, as Ferolia variegata
The heartwood is "dur, pesant, d'un beau rouge panaché de jaune" - hard, heavy, of a handsome red variegated with yellow. Recorded as one of the most valuable woods of Amazonia in 1934. The fruit were used to feed tortoises.
Myristicaceae (the nutmeg family)
Many members of the Myristicaceae have a red resin under their bark or oozing red sap. In many places they have local names referring to that blood-red resin. In Malay many have the Malay word for blood darah or darah darah in their names, These include Gymnacranthera farquhariana, Gymnacranthera forbesii and Gymnacranthera ocellata.
 |
Red Latex on the stem of Knema erratica
From A taxonomic study on the diversity of
Indian Knema Lour. (Myristicaceae)
in Taiwania (2016) 61(2): 141‒158
|
Knema angustifolia is found in India, Bangladesh and northern Burma, called mota-pasuti, tezranga and mamui in Assam. The tree provides a red latex used in Assam as a varnish to protect timber against moisture. The red latex is also used in Assam as an astringent against dysentery and mouth sores. Knema erratica has the same names in Assam and the same medicinal uses.
However, you should be careful to identify the correct species. The abundant red "juice" from Knema linifolia is said to be caustic and produces sores.
In 1686 an account was published of the plants of the Philippines. The author, the Jesuit priest Georgio Josepho Camello described a type of nutmeg called Dooghan, Duughan and Gonogono. The mace covering the nut was described as golden-yellow at first but becoming a pretty purple. He also described:
According to a report from 1897 in Kew Garden's Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, a kino could be obtained from cutting the bark of Myristica malabarica, a false nutmeg from Malabar in India. Called Malabar kino or kât jadikai it was found to be similar in quality to the preferred source of Malabar kino, Pterocarpus marsupium. Their analyst reported that it was in:
The original description of Haematodendron glabrum in Adansonia sér. 2 12: 375 (1972), the issues of which are all viewable online, includes:
Like the trees of Haematodendron glabrum, Mauloutchia and Brochoneura are also in the nutmeg family and also only found on Madagascar. They are also called rara, rarabe or raramena. The seeds of several species of both these genera are highly sought-after by the locals for pressing out the solid oil which is highly perfumed. The oil/butter has many medicinal uses.
The picture of a trunk oozing below is of Coelocaryon botryoides. There is little to find about this species online unless you want to know about the shape of its pollen or the type of butterflies that feed on it. The central Luba of the Democratic Republic of Congo sometimes use the wood of Coelocaryon botryoides for the one-note xylophone they call didimbadimba and sometimes make them with a species of Pterocarpus. Madimbadimba (the plural form of didimbadimba) are instruments made with a calabash gourd resonator just like the mbila of the Sanga, Zela, Shila and Nwenshi (also in Democratic Republic of Congo). The mbila are usually made with Pterocarpus angolensis and Pterocarpus tinctorius. I will be dealing with the bloodwoods of the genus Pterocarpus in a future article.
Pycnanthus angolensis Common names; Igbo: oje, akwa-mili, Luganda: munaba, lunaba, Yoruba akomu, French: arbre à suif (tallow-tree), English: false nutmeg, African nutmeg, cardboard, boxboard.
Cuts in the stem produce a copious, sticky, yellow exudate that turns red on exposure to the air. The exudate may be dark-brown or tea-coloured in trees found in Nigeria and Cameroon. Though at least some trees in Cameroon produced an abundant pink red exudate in 1994, a reddish liquid smelling of good turpentine in 1995 and an aromatic milky red black in 1996. The red exudate from cuts in the stem has been used medicinally for healing wounds. The plant contains an incredible range of both novel and known chemical constituents and most parts are used medicinally.
The seeds contain between 45% and 70% of a hard fat called kombo butter. The seeds are so oily that they can be burnt like a candle, as some Virola species were in South America. There are now many suppliers of kombo butter as a cosmetic and medicine, even in the UK. The fruit are a favourite of the local birds and monkeys. The Baka use the bright red seed-covering as a spice for sauces, just as the more common mace (from the nutmeg tree) is used.
Virola guatemalensis Honduras: sangre, so-called for the "red sap" and red spots that appear on newly cut wood. Seed oil used for soap and candles.
Virola koschnyi (= Virola merendonis) Guatemala: cedrillo (little cedar), drago (dragon). Honduras: sangre real (royal blood), sangro rojo (red blood), sangre colorada (red blood). Nicaragua: sangre drago (dragon blood). Belize, Honduras: palo de sangre (tree of blood). Guatemala: sangre (blood). Seed oil is used for candles and soap. Wood for wood stuff.* The seeds are a favourite food of monkeys and guatusos (Central American agoutis).
Virola sebifera Nicaragua: sangre drago (dragon blood). Colombia: sangretoro (bull blood), sangre de gallo (chicken blood). Bolivia: sangre de toro (bull blood). Ecuador: sangre de gallina (chicken blood). Venezuela: sangrino (little-blood), sangrino blanco, sangrito blanco (white little-blood). Brazil: urucurana-vermelha (red urucurana).
Urucu is the Tupi word for the powerful red dye that we know as annatto, produced in the seed-coverings (arils) of the Amazonian plant Bixa orellana. Annatto was cultivated and domesticated by native South Americans and Caribbeans. Annatto has been used for many decades in small quantities to dye margarine and Red Leicester cheese in the UK. Annatto (E160b to the European Union) is now used in a wider range of foods due to the resistance to synthetic food colours. Urucurana (literally: false annatto) is used by the Tupi to signify the related wild annatto species as well as some other plants that are like annatto in providing a red dye or, in other cases, plants that have very spiky seed-pods. My imminent article about crotons, that produce one of the types of sangre de drago, will have many more urucuranas.
The red sap of Virola sebifera was used for wounds. The hallucinogenic inner bark was used as a snuff against evil spirits and fever.*
Myrtaceae (the myrtle, eucalyptus and clove family).
Various eucalypts are called bloodwood in Australia. These are the trees that ooze a viscous red gum when cut. The common name gum tree comes from this oozing exudate. Eucalyptus gummifera (= Eucalyptus corymbosa) is the best-known example, though many of the bloodwoods have now been transferred to the genus Corymbia so it is now Corymbia gummifera. The dried red gum is still called kino, named after the African product from Pterocarpus erinaceus. It replaced the Gambia kino in European medicine and leather tanning by the end of the 19th century.
Other species of bloodwood include (also from this list) Eucalyptus acmenoides, Eucalyptus amygdalina, Eucalyptus botryoides, Corymbia calophylla, Eucalyptus crebra, Eucalyptus drepanophylla, Corymbia eximia, Eucalyptus haemastoma (= bloody mouth), Eucalyptus leptophleba, Eucalyptus leucoxylon, Eucalyptus macrorrhyncha, Eucalyptus melanophloia, Eucalyptus pilularis, Eucalyptus piperita, Eucalyptus planchoniana, Eucalyptus resinifera, Eucalyptus robusta (= Eucalyptus rostrata), Eucalyptus salubris, Eucalyptus siderophloia, Eucalyptus sieberi, Eucalyptus stellulata, Corymbia trachyphloia and Eucalyptus viminalis.
There is a Corymbia haematoxylon, the lesser bloodwood, which was described as a "typical bloodwood" with wood that was "red, with gum-veins, stated to be "very soft";".
The tannins were extracted from the bark of many other species of eucalypt that did not ooze commercial quantities of the gum. American kino or Jamaican kino, from the unrelated Caribbean tree Coccoloba uvifera (Polygonaceae, the knotweed or buckwheat family), was also obtained by water extraction of the powdered bark and a red dye obtained from the wood.
Papaveraceae (the poppy and fumitory family)
Bocconia arborea and related species of tree or plume poppy are known in many parts of Central America as llora sangre, "weeps-blood". The orange "sap" is used against toothache, eruptions of the skin, ulcers and intestinal parasites.
Bocconia frutescens is widespread in Central, northern South America and the Caribbean islands, This shrub or small tree is also called llorasangre. The orange-coloured latex is used as a dye. The exudate is used medicinally in poultices against injuries and ulcers.
Other members of the poppy family have latex of many different colours, though most are herbs rather than trees so I will ignore them. The bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis is the most famous of the bloody ones but the Chinese also have a red-rooted relative of poppy named after blood - a herb called xuè shuǐ cǎo (血水草 - blood herb, Eomecon chionantha).
Cut rhizome of Sanguinaria canadensis.
Taxaceae (the Yew family)
Taxus baccata, the common yew, bleeds a bright red resin when the branches are cut. I spoke to a carpenter some decades ago who had been quite disturbed by the blood when he cut down and prepared the wood of a yew. He really felt that he had done someone an injury and never wanted to repeat the experience.
Famous for their immense age, some yews live for several thousand years, if left alone. Yews are often planted in British graveyards, with many different reasons having been proposed. The fruit are edible but the seeds are deadly poisonous, as are the leaves. As the wood was used for making the also deadly longbow, Shakespeare referred to "theyre bowes, Of double fatal ewe" in Richard II.
The yew has been used for making bows for a long time. Yew bows have been found from Scotland (the Rotten Bottom bow, 5,600 years ago) and north-east Spain (7,000 years ago) to south Poland (5,300 years ago). The most famous would be Ötzi the Iceman's yew bow (and axe handle) from 5,300 years ago in the Tyrolean Ötztal Alps. The Meare Heath Bow, found in 1961 in peat in Somerset in the south-west of England, was made of yew wood 4,500 years ago. A reproduction of the Meare Heath Bow has been test fired 3,000 times.
The spelling of yew in English has been all over the place, including eu, eugh, ewghe, hew, hue, hw, iuu, iwe, vew, yeugh and yeve. In John Jackson of Bentley's will from 1524 we read that he left a legacy of "a bowe of u and a whyver of prikeshafftes".
The Clacton spear was found in 1911 near Clacton-on-Sea in Essex in the south-east of England. The 38cm (15 inch) fragment was determined to be made from yew wood and found to be 400,000 years old. This may be the oldest known worked wooden implement. The culture that produced it is referred to as the Clactonian. I love that in 2015 the Senior Conservator at the National History Museum could write "At present there is no consensus on the meaning of the Clactonian, but most authorities recognize that there is an enigma to be explained." We do not even know what species of human made the spear.
Contrary to the botanical purists who would like to impose their new jargon on everybody else, the yew berry is a berry. The traditional English term for at least 250 years has been "yew-berry", as the OED records. The origins of "yew-berry" can be traced back to about 1000AD as "eowbergh" in Old English. That is as far back as we can trace the word berry. The word is found in Leechbook III, an Old English medical treatise known from only one manuscript called Royal MS 12 D XVII and kept in the British Library. It was available to view online but the link does not seem to work at the moment. One of the recipes was to cure "water-elf disease". A single yew-berry combined with 18 other plants was mixed with ale and holy water then charms were chanted over it.
There is a yew tree that bleeds constantly due to some internal injury, in the churchyard of St Brynach's Church in Nevern, Pembrokeshire in southwest Wales.
All this blather is because I couldn't find any good folklore references to the blood of the yew, despite the clear historical significance of the tree to humans.
Theaceae (the tea and camellia family)
The Caribbean Gordonia haematoxylon (previously Laplacea haematoxylon) is known as Jamaican bloodwood. The original botanical description in 1800 recorded that it was called the Bloodredwood-tree in Jamaica. Also called ironwood, its blood-red wood was said to be the hardest of any tree native to Jamaica. The wood is a blood, deep or rich red and provides an excellent dye. In 1825 a botanist tried to change the name to Haemocharis haematoxylon - blood-lust blood-wood.
Gordonia fruticosa (Laplacea fruticosa) is the most widespread of the genus.
The flower clearly looks similar to that of Gordonia haematoxylon
Photo: W. Milliken from ColPlantA, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
Gordonia fruticosa (Laplacea fruticosa) looking slightly different from the Kew photo.
There may be many local varieties within widespread and abundant species.
Photo: Guilherme de Medeiros Antar from Flora do Brasil
Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License
However, you should be careful to identify the correct species. The abundant red "juice" from Knema linifolia is said to be caustic and produces sores.
In 1686 an account was published of the plants of the Philippines. The author, the Jesuit priest Georgio Josepho Camello described a type of nutmeg called Dooghan, Duughan and Gonogono. The mace covering the nut was described as golden-yellow at first but becoming a pretty purple. He also described:
Blood-red juice, drawn out from incisions in the bark, mildly astringent, and almost tasteless substituted for Dragon's Blood, and used in washes, in toothache, for fixing loose teeth, and in thrush of the mouth, also useful in mouth ulcers.
In the original Latin:There are trees called duguan in the Philippines that have been identified as Myristica philippinensis and Myristica simiarum. In 1916 it was observed that Knema heterophylla (now Knema glomerata) and all members of the genus Myristica in the Phillipines are referred to as dugúan, from the word blood, dugú. In the Tagalog language duguan means "bloody".
Succam Sanguineam, ex incisione caudicis prolectam, modice adstringentem, & ferme insipidum substituunt Sanguini Draconis, & utuntur in collutionibus, in dentium dolore, ad dentes vacillantes confirmandos, & in aphthis, aliisque oris exulcerationibus cum utilitate.
According to a report from 1897 in Kew Garden's Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, a kino could be obtained from cutting the bark of Myristica malabarica, a false nutmeg from Malabar in India. Called Malabar kino or kât jadikai it was found to be similar in quality to the preferred source of Malabar kino, Pterocarpus marsupium. Their analyst reported that it was in:
...transparent pieces of a deep garnet colour in thin fragments. It was not unlike small broken dragon's blood in some respects, and the latter name has been used sometimes by natives and merchants for some kinds of kino (from Pterocarpus indicus and P. erinaceus).There is a relatively-unknown tree in the forests of the east of Madagascar called Haematodendron glabrum, the only species in its genus. The original name on some herbarium specimens is Haematodendron sanguifluum, derived from the Greek for "blood-tree" and the Latin for "flowing with blood". The new specific name glabrum means bare, smooth or hairless, referring to the twigs and leaves being entirely smooth. Pictures can be found on Tropicos. Rather disappointingly, none of them show the bloody resin clearly, though in some cases the photographers clearly cut branches to take samples.
The original description of Haematodendron glabrum in Adansonia sér. 2 12: 375 (1972), the issues of which are all viewable online, includes:
Trunk bark in large trees is thick and cracked, when notched it lets exude a very fluid blood-red juice very abundantly.
In the original French:Haematodendron glabrum is called rara, rarabe or raramena. The word ra in Malagasy means blood and rara is simply duplication. Rarabe means "bloody-big" and raramena is "bloody-red". There don't seem to be any recorded local uses for this tree.
Écorce du tronc des grands arbres épaisse, crevassée, laissant exsuder très abondament, quand on l'entaille, un suc très fluide de couleur rouge sang.
Haematodendron glabrum Forêt de Lohanisahavongo, Madagascar.
Photo: © Patrice Antilahimena from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Like the trees of Haematodendron glabrum, Mauloutchia and Brochoneura are also in the nutmeg family and also only found on Madagascar. They are also called rara, rarabe or raramena. The seeds of several species of both these genera are highly sought-after by the locals for pressing out the solid oil which is highly perfumed. The oil/butter has many medicinal uses.
Mauloutchia chapelieri flowers, Madagascar
Photo: © Charles Rakotovao from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
The picture of a trunk oozing below is of Coelocaryon botryoides. There is little to find about this species online unless you want to know about the shape of its pollen or the type of butterflies that feed on it. The central Luba of the Democratic Republic of Congo sometimes use the wood of Coelocaryon botryoides for the one-note xylophone they call didimbadimba and sometimes make them with a species of Pterocarpus. Madimbadimba (the plural form of didimbadimba) are instruments made with a calabash gourd resonator just like the mbila of the Sanga, Zela, Shila and Nwenshi (also in Democratic Republic of Congo). The mbila are usually made with Pterocarpus angolensis and Pterocarpus tinctorius. I will be dealing with the bloodwoods of the genus Pterocarpus in a future article.
The damaged trunk of Coelocaryon botryoides oozing.
Nsassa Forest, Congo. © David J Harris African Plants, A Photo Guide
Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
Nsassa Forest, Congo. © David J Harris African Plants, A Photo Guide
Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
Cuts in the stem produce a copious, sticky, yellow exudate that turns red on exposure to the air. The exudate may be dark-brown or tea-coloured in trees found in Nigeria and Cameroon. Though at least some trees in Cameroon produced an abundant pink red exudate in 1994, a reddish liquid smelling of good turpentine in 1995 and an aromatic milky red black in 1996. The red exudate from cuts in the stem has been used medicinally for healing wounds. The plant contains an incredible range of both novel and known chemical constituents and most parts are used medicinally.
The seeds contain between 45% and 70% of a hard fat called kombo butter. The seeds are so oily that they can be burnt like a candle, as some Virola species were in South America. There are now many suppliers of kombo butter as a cosmetic and medicine, even in the UK. The fruit are a favourite of the local birds and monkeys. The Baka use the bright red seed-covering as a spice for sauces, just as the more common mace (from the nutmeg tree) is used.
Pycnanthus angolensis fruit showing the
similarity to the common nutmeg and mace
© David J Harris African Plants, A Photo Guide
Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
similarity to the common nutmeg and mace
© David J Harris African Plants, A Photo Guide
Free use for non-commercial scientific or educational purposes.
Virola elongata cut trunk showing bleeding of resin.
Photo: Denise Sasaki © Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
Default Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Photo: Denise Sasaki © Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
Default Creative Commons Attribution CC BY?
Virola koschnyi (= Virola merendonis) Guatemala: cedrillo (little cedar), drago (dragon). Honduras: sangre real (royal blood), sangro rojo (red blood), sangre colorada (red blood). Nicaragua: sangre drago (dragon blood). Belize, Honduras: palo de sangre (tree of blood). Guatemala: sangre (blood). Seed oil is used for candles and soap. Wood for wood stuff.* The seeds are a favourite food of monkeys and guatusos (Central American agoutis).
Virola koschnyi damaged trunk showing some bleeding of resin.
Costa Rica © David J Stang from Wikicommons
Virola sebifera Nicaragua: sangre drago (dragon blood). Colombia: sangretoro (bull blood), sangre de gallo (chicken blood). Bolivia: sangre de toro (bull blood). Ecuador: sangre de gallina (chicken blood). Venezuela: sangrino (little-blood), sangrino blanco, sangrito blanco (white little-blood). Brazil: urucurana-vermelha (red urucurana).
Urucu is the Tupi word for the powerful red dye that we know as annatto, produced in the seed-coverings (arils) of the Amazonian plant Bixa orellana. Annatto was cultivated and domesticated by native South Americans and Caribbeans. Annatto has been used for many decades in small quantities to dye margarine and Red Leicester cheese in the UK. Annatto (E160b to the European Union) is now used in a wider range of foods due to the resistance to synthetic food colours. Urucurana (literally: false annatto) is used by the Tupi to signify the related wild annatto species as well as some other plants that are like annatto in providing a red dye or, in other cases, plants that have very spiky seed-pods. My imminent article about crotons, that produce one of the types of sangre de drago, will have many more urucuranas.
The red sap of Virola sebifera was used for wounds. The hallucinogenic inner bark was used as a snuff against evil spirits and fever.*
Virola mollissima cut trunk showing bleeding of resin.
Photo: Ayslaner Gallo © Board of Trustees, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew
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Various eucalypts are called bloodwood in Australia. These are the trees that ooze a viscous red gum when cut. The common name gum tree comes from this oozing exudate. Eucalyptus gummifera (= Eucalyptus corymbosa) is the best-known example, though many of the bloodwoods have now been transferred to the genus Corymbia so it is now Corymbia gummifera. The dried red gum is still called kino, named after the African product from Pterocarpus erinaceus. It replaced the Gambia kino in European medicine and leather tanning by the end of the 19th century.
Red gum oozing from a Red Bloodwood, Corymbia gummifera
© John Tann from Sydney, Australia from Wikicommons
Other species of bloodwood include (also from this list) Eucalyptus acmenoides, Eucalyptus amygdalina, Eucalyptus botryoides, Corymbia calophylla, Eucalyptus crebra, Eucalyptus drepanophylla, Corymbia eximia, Eucalyptus haemastoma (= bloody mouth), Eucalyptus leptophleba, Eucalyptus leucoxylon, Eucalyptus macrorrhyncha, Eucalyptus melanophloia, Eucalyptus pilularis, Eucalyptus piperita, Eucalyptus planchoniana, Eucalyptus resinifera, Eucalyptus robusta (= Eucalyptus rostrata), Eucalyptus salubris, Eucalyptus siderophloia, Eucalyptus sieberi, Eucalyptus stellulata, Corymbia trachyphloia and Eucalyptus viminalis.
There is a Corymbia haematoxylon, the lesser bloodwood, which was described as a "typical bloodwood" with wood that was "red, with gum-veins, stated to be "very soft";".
The tannins were extracted from the bark of many other species of eucalypt that did not ooze commercial quantities of the gum. American kino or Jamaican kino, from the unrelated Caribbean tree Coccoloba uvifera (Polygonaceae, the knotweed or buckwheat family), was also obtained by water extraction of the powdered bark and a red dye obtained from the wood.
Papaveraceae (the poppy and fumitory family)
Bocconia arborea and related species of tree or plume poppy are known in many parts of Central America as llora sangre, "weeps-blood". The orange "sap" is used against toothache, eruptions of the skin, ulcers and intestinal parasites.
Bocconia frutescens does not have the most spectacular flowers of the poppy family.
Costa Rica Photo: © Alex Munro from Tropicos
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
Bocconia frutescens is widespread in Central, northern South America and the Caribbean islands, This shrub or small tree is also called llorasangre. The orange-coloured latex is used as a dye. The exudate is used medicinally in poultices against injuries and ulcers.
Bocconia frutescens in La Cocha, Pasto, Colombia.
Leaves and bunches of fruit are much more ornamental than the flowers.
Leaves and bunches of fruit are much more ornamental than the flowers.
Photo: © David E. Granados Z from ColPlantA, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Use only for educational or research proposals. Not for commercial use.
Other members of the poppy family have latex of many different colours, though most are herbs rather than trees so I will ignore them. The bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis is the most famous of the bloody ones but the Chinese also have a red-rooted relative of poppy named after blood - a herb called xuè shuǐ cǎo (血水草 - blood herb, Eomecon chionantha).
Photo: © Gerrit Davidse from Tropicos
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Taxaceae (the Yew family)
Taxus baccata, the common yew, bleeds a bright red resin when the branches are cut. I spoke to a carpenter some decades ago who had been quite disturbed by the blood when he cut down and prepared the wood of a yew. He really felt that he had done someone an injury and never wanted to repeat the experience.
Famous for their immense age, some yews live for several thousand years, if left alone. Yews are often planted in British graveyards, with many different reasons having been proposed. The fruit are edible but the seeds are deadly poisonous, as are the leaves. As the wood was used for making the also deadly longbow, Shakespeare referred to "theyre bowes, Of double fatal ewe" in Richard II.
The yew has been used for making bows for a long time. Yew bows have been found from Scotland (the Rotten Bottom bow, 5,600 years ago) and north-east Spain (7,000 years ago) to south Poland (5,300 years ago). The most famous would be Ötzi the Iceman's yew bow (and axe handle) from 5,300 years ago in the Tyrolean Ötztal Alps. The Meare Heath Bow, found in 1961 in peat in Somerset in the south-west of England, was made of yew wood 4,500 years ago. A reproduction of the Meare Heath Bow has been test fired 3,000 times.
The spelling of yew in English has been all over the place, including eu, eugh, ewghe, hew, hue, hw, iuu, iwe, vew, yeugh and yeve. In John Jackson of Bentley's will from 1524 we read that he left a legacy of "a bowe of u and a whyver of prikeshafftes".
The Clacton spear was found in 1911 near Clacton-on-Sea in Essex in the south-east of England. The 38cm (15 inch) fragment was determined to be made from yew wood and found to be 400,000 years old. This may be the oldest known worked wooden implement. The culture that produced it is referred to as the Clactonian. I love that in 2015 the Senior Conservator at the National History Museum could write "At present there is no consensus on the meaning of the Clactonian, but most authorities recognize that there is an enigma to be explained." We do not even know what species of human made the spear.
Contrary to the botanical purists who would like to impose their new jargon on everybody else, the yew berry is a berry. The traditional English term for at least 250 years has been "yew-berry", as the OED records. The origins of "yew-berry" can be traced back to about 1000AD as "eowbergh" in Old English. That is as far back as we can trace the word berry. The word is found in Leechbook III, an Old English medical treatise known from only one manuscript called Royal MS 12 D XVII and kept in the British Library. It was available to view online but the link does not seem to work at the moment. One of the recipes was to cure "water-elf disease". A single yew-berry combined with 18 other plants was mixed with ale and holy water then charms were chanted over it.
There is a yew tree that bleeds constantly due to some internal injury, in the churchyard of St Brynach's Church in Nevern, Pembrokeshire in southwest Wales.
All this blather is because I couldn't find any good folklore references to the blood of the yew, despite the clear historical significance of the tree to humans.
Yew, Taxus baccata showing scab on cut branch.
Still showing some red in the dried resin.
Still showing some red in the dried resin.
My photo, Parsonage Gardens, Didsbury. August 2018 No ©
Theaceae (the tea and camellia family)
The Caribbean Gordonia haematoxylon (previously Laplacea haematoxylon) is known as Jamaican bloodwood. The original botanical description in 1800 recorded that it was called the Bloodredwood-tree in Jamaica. Also called ironwood, its blood-red wood was said to be the hardest of any tree native to Jamaica. The wood is a blood, deep or rich red and provides an excellent dye. In 1825 a botanist tried to change the name to Haemocharis haematoxylon - blood-lust blood-wood.
Gordonia haematoxylon. I couldn't find any good photos so I crudely
coloured this botanical illustration from the Flora of Jamaica (1926)
coloured this botanical illustration from the Flora of Jamaica (1926)
The flower clearly looks similar to that of Gordonia haematoxylon
Photo: W. Milliken from ColPlantA, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
There may be many local varieties within widespread and abundant species.
Photo: Guilherme de Medeiros Antar from Flora do Brasil
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The timber of Gordonia fruticosa is used for construction, flooring, furniture and plywood*. Local names include ira colorada (red wood) and maria-mole-da-vermelha (red maria-mole, maria-mole is a name used for many other types of timber tree). According to the IUCN Red List the tree is of Least Concern and the industrial use of Laplacea fruticosa timber is small. The tree is found from Ecuador across to Brazil and north to the Honduras. Trees are used as a local resource of timber, for furniture, cabinets, and canoes. Its bark can be used to poison small fish and against infections such as dysentery. The sapwood is said to be pinkish white and the heartwood is reddish brown. This image of the trunk appears to show some deep red showing through the bark.
* Dictionary of Trees, Volume 2: South America: Nomenclature, Taxonomy and Ecology by M.M. Grandtner, Julien Chevrette, 2013
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