Browse Items (23 total)

Semperviva is native to southern Europe. Since ancient Rome, there have been superstitions about the plant’s ability to protect houses from lightning strikes. The plant’s magical properties also extend to medicinal remedies. For example, English…

Sandalwood trees are native to East Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, and North Australia. Its distribution also extends to Chile, Hawaiian Archipelago, and New Zealand. Since ancient times, sandalwood oil production was led by India, and its aroma was…

The mastic tree is native to the shores of the Mediterranean. Specifically, mastic resin is known to be produced from Chios, an island in the Aegean Archipelago. Throughout history, the resin was highly prized. In 1346, the city of Chios was…

At the end of the fourteenth century and start of the fifteenth century, Armenian bole as a recommended base for water gilding was mentioned for the first time by Johannes Archerius and Cennino Cennini. The red color of the gilding base in many…

Liquidambar orientalis comes from Turkey. It is also known as “Turkish sweetgum”. It is widely distributed across southwestern Anatolia nowadays. Benzoin styrax is found across Southeast Asia and in particular the island of Sumatra. As early as the…

Dragon’s blood, obtained from the species Dracaena draco, Dracaena cinnabari, and likely Daemonorops draco from the island of Sokotra, was available in Europe since at least the first century CE. Later, with the expansion of European voyages, the…

The term “lac” originates from Hindi and Sanskrit words, respectively lakh and laksha, which mean “hundred thousand,” referring to the large quantity of insects needed to produce enough lac material. Used as early as around 1200 BCE in India, lac…

In the early modern period, sugar production was mainly focused on cane sugar collected from the stalks of tall grasses in the genus Saccharum. During the late medieval period, large-scale sugar production developed in the Mediterranean, especially…

Fenugreek is native to Southern Europe and Asia. In classical times, it was well known in Europe for the medicinal properties of its seeds. Evidence also shows that fenugreek was used for culinary purposes in ancient Egypt.

The silkworm was domesticated in China by 3000 BCE, and silk became a major trade good between Xi’an in central China and the eastern Mediterranean, carried by caravans across ancient routes that span the Taklamakan Desert. Known as the Silk Road,…