F. benjamina L., F. cunia Bach-Ham., F. elastica Roxb.,
F. infectoria Roxb., F. ramphii Bh, F. religiosa L.
Grow in Tropical Asia. Cultivated, some as rubber plants (for example, F. elastica Roxb., F. vogelii Mig., etc.), but almost all for the cultivation of laconos (Tachardia or Coccus lacca Kerr), mainly in India and Southeast Asia. For the same purpose, oilseed Schleichera is also used – Schleichera trijuga Willd. (family Sapindaceae) and some other plants from the Fabaceae and Euphorbiaceae families.
Production is delivered mainly in India, Burma and Indonesia.
Female insects Coccus lacca with red bodies stick to the tips of young tree branches. Fertilized females secrete a resinous-mucous mass and die, leaving testicles in cells filled with red liquid. Developed young insects fly away or die, and tree branches covered with resin dry up. These twigs, 5-10 cm long, break off, and they provide commercial raw materials. Subsequently, the resin is removed and processed into red paint and yellow-brown resin in tablets or plates, called “shellac”.
Shellac is composed of aliphatic compounds (primarily aluritic acid) and alicyclic hydroxycarboxylic acids (primarily shellacs); tricyclic sesquiterpendihydrooxydicarboxylic acid is also present. Aleuretic acid is 9,10,16-trihydroxypalmitic acid. The coloring matter belongs to anthraquinone derivatives.
Both products are of technical importance. Shellac has found widespread use in the tablet industry for the application of enteric film (acid resistant) coatings. In oriental medicine, it is used for lung diseases.
The plant contains resin.
PLANTS CONTAINING RESINS AND BALMS
Like essential oils, resins are complex mixtures of various organic compounds. In plants, they are often present simultaneously with essential oils, but may be accompanied by substances from other groups of natural compounds – gums, tannins, sterols, sometimes rubber.
According to the primary composition, there are three main groups of natural resins:
– resins (actually) – Rsina;
– oil-resin, or balms, – Olea-resina, or Balsama. These are liquid resins, which are natural solutions of resins in their own essential oil;
– gum resins – Gummi-resina. These are liquid (in living plants) mixtures of gums and resins dissolved in essential oil (more precisely, Cummi-olea-resina).
The resins themselves, freed from accompanying substances, like the components of essential oils, are also terpenoids, but more complex, belonging mainly to the class of diterpenes (C 20 H 32 ).
Resin hydrocarbons (for example, pimaradiene), their oxygen derivatives, resinol or resin acids (for example, abietic and pimaric acids) and resinol or resin alcohols (for example, cafestol) are distinguished among resin diterpenes.
Among the resinols, rezitannols or tannols, which have the properties of tannins, are distinguished into a special group. Resinols can form esters.
The constituent substances of resins can be triterpene acids and alcohols – derivatives of a- and b-amirin (for example, mastic tree), lignans (for example, guaiac resin), etc.