Labdanum

Labdanum, also written ladanum, ladan or ladanon, is a sticky brown resin from two Mediterranean rockroses: Cistus ladanifer, the gum rockrose of the western Mediterranean that this entry names, and Cistus creticus, the pink rockrose of the east. C. ladanifer is an evergreen shrub of one to two and a half metres, with narrow lance-shaped leaves and large flowers of five white, papery petals, usually with a red to maroon spot at their base, and the whole plant is coated in a fragrant, sticky exudate. It withstands long summer drought and cold, and has spread aggressively over old farmland and grassland in central Spain and southern Portugal, where it is called jara pringosa and esteva. In antiquity labdanum was gathered by combing it out of the beards and thighs of goats and sheep that had grazed the shrubs; in nineteenth-century Crete it was swept from the bushes with a rake strung with leather thongs. It went into incense and was taken for colds, coughs, menstrual troubles and rheumatism. The resin called lot in two passages of Genesis, carried from Canaan to Egypt, is usually read as labdanum, and some scholars identify it with onycha, an ingredient of the incense offering in Exodus. It is still among the raw materials of incense making, but today it is produced mainly for perfume, where its rich amber scent stands in for ambergris.