Garcinia , Gummigut – Garcinia hamburyi Hook. f., syn.
It is characteristic of the flora of Thailand, Kampuchea, the Mekong Delta.
Dioecious tree, 10-15 m tall, with orange-brown bark. Leaves cruciform-opposite, glabrous, leathery, short-petiolate, lanceolate, entire. The flowers are pale yellow, small: male – on legs, female – sessile in the corners of the leaves. The fruits are berry-like, yellowish-green, the size of a large cherry.
In the bark of the tree and the periphery of the core there are long secretory passages containing gum in the form of a yellow emulsion. To extract gum resin, spiral incisions are made on the trunk, cutting the passages, and pieces of hollow bamboo tubes are hung from the wound; their bottom is a partition in the internodes. The flowing juice accumulates in the tubes, they are dried, then the hardened mass is taken out. The product goes on sale in the form of hard but brittle cylindrical segments 2-5 cm in diameter with a longitudinally ribbed surface, orange-yellow in color, darker in the fracture. There is no smell.
Gummigut – Gummiresina Gutti or Gutti – consists of resin acids (70-80%) yellow, soluble in alcohol, and gum (15-20%), soluble in water. The powder easily forms a yellow emulsion. Found garcinolic acid.
It is used as a powerful laxative (single dose of 0.125 g). Used in the manufacture of varnish for watercolor paints, etc.
The plant contains gum resins.
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.