Dragon’s Blood tree (Dracaena cinnabari) – Socotra island

The trees can be harvested for their crimson red resin, called dragon's blood, which was highly prized in the ancient world and is still used today. Around the Mediterranean basin it is used as a dye and as a medicine, Socotrans use it ornamentally as well as dyeing wool, gluing pottery, a breath freshener, and lipstick. Because of the belief that it is the blood of the dragon it is also used in ritual magic and alchemy.[12] In 1883, the Scottish botanist Isaac Bayley Balfour identified three grades of resin: the most valuable were tear-like in appearance, then a mixture of small chips and fragments, with a mixture of fragments and debris being the cheapest.[6] The resin of D. cinnabari is thought to have been the original source of dragon's blood until during the medieval and renaissance periods when other plants were used instead.[13]