Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia/Series 2/Volume 1/The Gamboge Tree
THE GAMBOGE TREE.[1]
The Gamboge plant or tree is woody, with thick ovate leaves, and the natives say that it sometimes grows to be 18 inches in diameter, though generally less, reaching a great height. The plant is not cultivated, but grows wild like the sugar maple in the forests of America. At the commencement of the rainy season parties of the natives go out in search of the trees, and finding one of the proper size they make a spiral incision in the bark on two sides of the tree, at the base of which they place joints of bambu, into which the sap percolates, day by day, for months. It is at first a yellowish fluid, hardening gradually into a viscous and then into a solid state. In the viscous state its fracture is glistening like crystal. In this consists the whole process of its preparation when pure, and on the spot where it is gathered it sells for only 4, 5 to 6 ticals per picul. It hardens in the bambu.
The common means of adulteration is rice flour or the bark of the tree pulverized, but this last is apt to impart a greenish tinge. Sand is also added.
The flowers are said to resemble those of the "egg-plant" and the fruit to be small and globular. Accounts differ as to the season of gathering the gum. Some persons say they have been accustomed to gather it in the rainy season while others say they collect it in the dry season. A good tree generally yields enough of sap to fill three joints of bambu, 18 to 20 inches long and 1½ inches in diameter. The trees are said to grow on both high and low land. If the trees are tapped every year it shortens their lives, but when the gum is only drawn every alternate year they do not appear to suffer injury and last for many years. There are several kinds of trees which produce substances resembling gamboge, but they differ essentially from it.
Although Kamboja is the appropriate locality of the plant, there are at present large forests of it in the province of Chantibun in Siam. It does not grow in Kamboja so far north as Matabong. The name is unquestionably derived from the native name of the place of its original discovery, which should be written in accordance with both Kambojan and Siamese usage—Kambuja. Hence the Portuguese "Gutta Kambuja" "Kambuja drops." The Siamese call it Rŏng, sounding the o as in cone but shorter.
- ↑ This account of the Gamboge tree is taken from a memorandum furnished in 1850, by the late Revd J. Taylor Jones, of Bangkok, to Sir James Brooke, K.C.B.