Galbanum

Galbanum is an aromatic gum resin from Persian species of Ferula, chiefly Ferula gummosa, once called Ferula galbaniflua, a perennial herb of the carrot family native to Iran and Turkmenistan. Its milky juice oozes from the base of the stem and from the leaf sheaths, often without any cutting, and hardens into translucent tears or a soft, sticky mass, light brown, yellowish or greenish-yellow. It tastes bitter and smells sharp, musky and intensely green, with a turpentine edge. Galbanum has a long sacred history: the Book of Exodus names it with stacte, onycha and frankincense as one of the four ingredients of the ketoret, the incense offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, and the medieval commentator Rashi read its bitterness there as a reminder of unrepentant sinners. Hippocrates used it as a medicine, and Pliny, who called it bubonion, credited it with remarkable healing powers. Later physicians gave it for chronic bronchitis and spread it as a plaster on swellings, uses now obsolete. Today it is prized mainly in perfumery, where its green note shaped scents such as Balmain's Vent Vert of 1945. It is a close relative of asafoetida, and old writers often confused the gum resins of Ferula with one another.