dragons blood

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dragon's blood

dragon's blood name for a red resin obtained from a number of different plants. It was held by early Greeks, Romans, and Arabs to have medicinal properties; Dioscorides and other early writers described it. A chief source was Dracaena cinnabari, a tree of the agave family. Voyagers to the Canary Islands in the 15th cent. obtained it from another species, D. draco. The resin, exuding beautiful garnet-colored drops when the tree is wounded, was well known as the source of varnish for 18th-century Italian violinmakers. Later, dragon's-blood varnishes and medicines were obtained chiefly from the immature fruits of a palm ( Daemonorops draco ) native to Malaya. Although still sometimes used in photoengraving processes, dragon's blood as a coloring material has largely been replaced by synthetics.

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Dracaena

A Dictionary of Plant Sciences | 1998 | | Â© A Dictionary of Plant Sciences 1998, originally published by Oxford University Press 1998. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Dracaena (family Agavaceae) A genus mostly of trees whose stems branch and thicken by an extrafascicular cambium (see FASCICULAR CAMBIUM). D. draco is the dragon tree. Trunks of several species exude dragon's-blood resin. There are about 40 species, occurring in the Old World tropics and subtropics.

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MICHAEL ALLABY. "Dracaena." A Dictionary of Plant Sciences. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. 12 Nov. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MICHAEL ALLABY. "Dracaena." A Dictionary of Plant Sciences. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. (November 12, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O7-Dracaena.html

MICHAEL ALLABY. "Dracaena." A Dictionary of Plant Sciences. 1998. Retrieved November 12, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O7-Dracaena.html

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