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is a small tree in our southern provinces. But in the Orient it grows as big as an elm. The 

 leaves consist of seven to nine shiny oval leaflets borne on a slightly winged common 

 petiole. The flowers are dioecious; the male ones form axillary upright panicles. The 

 stamens are a beautiful purple. The female flowers turn into a large number of small dry 

 rounded drupes the size of a pea. 



FLOWERS: in April and in May. 



RANGE: I've found it in the vicinity of Grasse and the forest of Esterel. 



NOMENCLATURE. Turpentine, strictly speaking, comes out of incisions made in 

 the bark of this tree. The term has been extended to other resins of coniferous trees. 

 German, terpentinbaum. English, common terpentine-tree. Russian, skipidarnoe derewo. 

 Arabic, butem. Portuguese, cornicabra. Modem Greek, stjinos. 



USES. In the Levant a resinous fluid known commercially as turpentine of Chios 

 [Translator's note: an island in the Aegean] exudes naturally from cracks in the tree's 

 bark. It also is obtained in larger quantities by making incisions in its trunk and branches. 

 This material is used medicinally. It's applied externally as an effective resolvent and 

 internally as a tonic and as a stimulant for diseases of the urinary tract. It's also a 

 successful treatment for taenia [Translator's note: tapeworm]. But since it's not very- 

 available commercially, it's almost always substituted for by turpentine from the larch, 

 especially in pharmacies. It's prescribed as a pill of one to two eighths of an ounce. It's 

 been noticed that those who take turpentine internally have an odor in their urine. Even 

 working with varnishes that contain a lot of turpentine is enough to make the urine smell 

 like violets. In Turkey the women continually chew 



