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Frankincense Trees Overexploited For Christmas Scent |
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Published by Science Daily
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Wednesday, 13 December 2006 |
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Frankincense Trees Overexploited For Christmas Scent
"Current rates of tapping frankincense - which according to the Bible was given to the baby Jesus by the three wise men at Christmas and which will feature in thousands of Nativity plays in coming days - are endangering the fragrant resin's sustained production, ecologists have warned. Writing in the December issue of Journal of Applied Ecology, ecologists from the Netherlands and Eritrea say that over tapping the trees results in them producing fewer, less viable seeds.
Frankincense is an aromatic hardened wood resin obtained by tapping Boswellia trees. For thousands of years, frankincense has been hugely important both socially and economically as an ingredient in incense and perfumes. But, say the ecologists, its production in the Horn of Africa is declining because Boswellia woodlands are failing to regenerate.
The ecologists hypothesised that poor regeneration was due to the fact that intensive tapping meant that the trees were diverting too much carbohydrate into resin, at the expense of reproductive organs, such as flowers, fruit and seeds. Working in south-western Eritrea, they tested the hypothesis by looking at how many seeds intensively tapped trees produced, and their germination rates, compared with untapped trees...."
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