Re: Can you tell me what the formal name of the mineral Dragon's blood

Message ID Number: 889583596.Es

Subject: Can you tell me the formal name of the mineral Dragon's blood?

Dear Brian:

I was unable to locate any reference to a mineral nicknamed "dragon's blood." Let me point out that this is not a science question but rather just a question of common or colloquial names, in this case probably associated with some form of mysticism. Therefore, I contacted my local alchemist and asked him to put aside, for a moment, his work on turning lead to gold. He told me that "dragon's blood" is an herb, but being a little rusty on his herbology, couldn't clarify further.

So, I went to Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 2nd College Edition, 1976, (as I'm sure you did as well, right?) and found the following entry on page 424:

"dragon's blood - any of several red, resinous substances obtained from various tropical plants and trees, especially a Malaysian palm (Dracaena draco), and used for coloring varnishes and in photoengraving."

I also thought that perhaps the WWW would have some reference so I surfed the 'net (here again, I'm sure you did as well, right?) and located the following:

"bianca's Herb Patch : Dragon's Blood

The dragon tree bears round scaly fruit, about the size of a large cherry, which when ripe is coated with a reinous exudation called dragon's blood. When ground, the resin yields a fine red powder that is soluble in alcohol and if heated gives off benzoic acid. this resin is astringent and is thought to have aphrodisiac properties. It is used to heal wounds, in coloring varnishes and lacquers, in photoengraving, as a douche for gleet, and in an incantation to bring back a loved one."

This page is located at: http://www.bianca.com/shack/kitchen/herbs/dragon.html

If you want to continue on your own this quest for the elusive "dragon's blood" mineral, I suggest you call a local rock & mineral shop, as there are hundreds of local nicknames for minerals that never make it into reference books.

The other possibility is that someone has confused this with "bloodstone" a name given to a certain variety of cryptocrystalline (extremely fine-grained) quartz, called chalcedony. Typically, this semi-precious stone, known as jasper, has a yellow, brown or reddish color, which comes from trace amounts of iron oxide. On the other hand, bloodstone, a variety of jasper, is dark green with red spots, which look somewhat like spatters of blood, hence the common name, "bloodstone." Bloodstone is also sometimes called heliotrope.

In case you are interested the compositions for these are: Quartz - SiO₂; Iron oxide (hematite) - Fe₂O₃.

If you would instead prefer to have me investigate further, you'll have to provide me with more detail about where you learned of this so-called mineral, some of its physical traits, etc.