Opoponax

Opoponax, also spelt opopanax, is the perfumery trade name for bisabol, the fragrant oleo-gum-resin of Commiphora guidottii, a tree of Somalia and Ethiopia called hadi in Somali. The resin has been exported from Somalia since ancient times, and Somali names for it include hebbakhade, habaghadi and habak hadi; in English it has been called sweet, scented or perfumed myrrh and perfumed bdellium. The name first belonged to something else: the gum resin of plants of the genus Opopanax, used in herbal medicine, which Grieve in 1931 describes as the sun-dried juice from the stem base of Opopanax chironium, a yellow-flowered umbellifer of the Levant and southern Europe. Early in the twentieth century perfumers began applying the name to bisabol, which has now almost entirely replaced the original in trade, and the spelling opoponax is often used to keep the two apart. The perfumery resin was long wrongly credited to Commiphora erythraea, and Kynes still lists opopanax as a name for that tree's sweet myrrh. A similar resin from Commiphora holtziana, called habak hagar in Somali, is sometimes sold as opopanax as well, partly because the two smell alike, though hadi's is counted the stronger. Perfumers make a resinoid from it by solvent extraction, and it features in well-known perfumes such as Guerlain's Shalimar. Opoponax is also among the raw resins used to make incense.