Golden Frankincense

Golden frankincense, also called Sudanese frankincense, is the gum resin of Boswellia papyrifera, one of several trees of the genus Boswellia, in the Burseraceae family, whose resin is sold as frankincense. It is a different species from Boswellia sacra of southern Arabia and Somalia. The tree is native to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan, where river gorges such as the Giba in Ethiopia are typical habitat, and it is cultivated in Ethiopia for its valuable resin, known there as itan zaf. Resin from Ethiopia, Sudan and eastern Africa is thought to have been the chief frankincense of the ancient world, and the species now supplies roughly two-thirds of the frankincense produced worldwide. As with each frankincense species, its resin comes in grades that depend partly on when it is harvested, and it is sorted by hand. Its future is uncertain: an ecologist reported in 2006 that the trees had become hard to find in Eritrea by the late 1990s, and a 2019 study forecast that their numbers would halve within twenty years. All Boswellia species face habitat loss and overexploitation, and in the poor, dry and often troubled regions where they grow, selling the resin is one of few sources of income, which leads to overtapping. The species was described in 1843; older names for it include Amyris papyrifera and Boswellia occidentalis.