AMYRIS GILEADENSIS.— BALSAM OF GILEAD TREE. 
Class VIII. OCTANDRIA.— Order I. MONOGYNIA. 
Natural Order, BURSERACEiE. 
This species of amyris, which affords the balsam of Gilead or Mecca, the most precious of the balsams, is 
a native of Arabia, and was found by Forskal, and also by Niebuhr, growing spontaneously in the mountains 
of the province of Yemen. The balsam-tree, though not a native of Judea, was cultivated with great per- 
fection many centuries before Christ in the gardens near Jericho, on the banks of the Jordan; and it was 
from Gilead in Judea, whence the merchants brought the resinous product to Egypt, that it derived its 
appellation of Balsam of Gilead. Since the conquest of Palestine by the Romans, Mr. Buckingham says 
the balsam-tree has entirely disappeared, and that not one is now to be found; but Burckhardt asserts, that 
it is still partially cultivated in the gardens near the lake of Tiberias. Mr. Bruce informs us that it is a 
native of Abyssinia, growing among the myrrh-trees behind Azab, all along the coasts to the straits of 
Babelmandel. 
It is an evergreen shrub or tree, seldom exceeding fourteen feet in height, having a flat top, like trees that 
are exposed to snow blasts or sea air, which gives it a stunted appearance. The trunk is about eight or ten 
inches in diameter, with many spreading, crooked, purplish branches, having protuberant buds loaded with 
aromatic resin. The wood is light and open, incapable of receiving a polish, resinous, externally of a reddish 
colour, and covered with a smooth ash-coloured bark. The leaves are thinly scattered, small, composed of 
one or two pairs of opposite leaflets, with an odd one ; the leaflets are sessile, obovate, entire, veined, smooth, 
and of a bright green colour. The flowers proceed from the buds by threes ; they are small, white, and 
furnished with a minute slightly bifid bractea, sheathing the base of the pedicle. The calyx is permanent, 
and divided into four spreading segments ; the petals are four, oblong, concave, spreading : the filaments are 
eight, tapering, erect, bearing erect anthers : the germen is superior, ovate, with a thick style, the length of 
the filaments, terminated by a quadrangular stigma. The fruit is of a reddish-brown colour, oval, very 
slightly compressed, pointed, four-valved, and containing a somewhat pointed, smooth nut, flattened on one 
side, and marked with a longitudinal furrow. 
Balm or balsam, is a term commonly applied to resinous substances, which exudes spontaneously from 
certain plants. It serves very properly to express the Hebrew word which in the Septuagint is rendered 
pijrivijj and by the ancients is indiscriminately interpreted resin. But Kimchi, and other moderns, have 
understood the Hebrew noun to designate that particular species formerly called “ balsamum ” or “ opo - 
balsamum ,” and now distinguished by the name of balsamum Judaicum , or balsam of Gilead : celebrated by 
the ancients for its costliness, its medical virtues, and for being the product of Judea only, and of a particular 
spot there ; which Josephus attributes to the neighbourhood of Jericho, but says that the tree was, according 
to tradition, originally brought by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon from Arabia Felix, the country 
that now principally supplies the demand for that precious drug. 
The great value set upon this drug in the East is traced to the earliest ages. The Ishmaelites, or 
Arabian carriers and merchants, trafficking with the Arabian commodities into Egypt, brought with them 
HJ? as a part of their cargo. (Genesis xxxvi. 25 ; xliii. 11.) Strabo alone, of all the ancients, has given us 
the account of the place of its origin. “In that most happy land of the Sabeeans,” says he, “ grows the 
frankincense; and in the coast that is about Saba, the balsam also.” We need not doubt that it was trans- 
planted early into Arabia, that is, into the south parts of Arabia Felix immediately fronting Azab, where it 
is indigenous. The first plantation, says he, that succeeded, seems to have been at Petra, the ancient me- 
tropolis of Arabia, now called Beder, or Beder Humhin. 
