Boswellia frereana

Boswellia frereana belongs to the Burseraceae family, the botanical family that also contains the other frankincense trees and myrrh. The Latin name is the scientific one; the working names are older and local.

In Somalia the tree is known as Yagcar or Yagar, and its resin as Maydi or Meydi. Those are the names used where the tree actually grows, and they distinguish the resin from the other frankincense a trader might be offered.

The tree grows along the limestone escarpments of northern Somalia, sometimes at elevations approaching 1,200 metres. This is steep, rocky, exposed country — cliff faces and broken stone rather than soil.

Boswellia frereana holds on to it directly. Its roots penetrate cracks and crevices in the rock, and its swollen base helps anchor the tree to the stone, so that mature trees appear to grow directly from the cliff face.

This limestone escarpment habitat is characteristic of the species’ restricted range in northern Somalia.

Cutting the bark initiates the tree’s natural resin response. What is collected afterwards is the material the tree produced to seal its own wound.

The exudate emerges pale and milky. It hardens in place, in air, into the golden and cream-coloured material traded as Maydi — which is why the pieces are irregular: their shapes are the shapes they set in.

Boswellia frereana is endemic to northern Somalia. Maydi comes from a remarkably restricted geographic range: a narrow band of limestone escarpment and rocky cliff along that coast.

That restricted range is why geographic origin is central to identifying genuine Maydi.

Maydi is a distinct Boswellia species, from one place.

Its distinctive chemistry is measurable. A 2021 study analysed resin from individual Boswellia frereana trees and found a triterpenoid fraction rich in lupeol, α-amyrin, 3-epi-lupeol and β-amyrin — the signature triterpenoid profile of the species.

The essential oil in that study showed a variable chemotype with α-thujene and α-pinene, and earlier analytical work identified a volatile fingerprint distinctive to Boswellia frereana olibanum.