Copal Manila

Copal Trees: Genera Bursera and Protium

Copal comes from trees belonging to the Burseraceae family, specifically from the Bursera and Protium genera.

The term copal derives from the Nahuatl word copalli, which is applied to various aromatic resins: copals from East Africa (from Zanzibar, Madagascar and Mozambique), from Manila (Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and the East Indies), among others.

Copales are typical trees of low deciduous forests, which is the vegetation that develops in places where there is a very strong drought for more than four months a year, which causes the trees to shed all their leaves and then with the rains green up.

Most copales produce flowers at the beginning of the rainy season. The flowers appear at the same time as the leaf shoots, and flowering is rapid.

Bursera Bipinnata represents the plants that are preferentially exploited to obtain white copal, but also, the trees in second place are subject to collection for the resin that they release naturally and which is known under different names: stone copal, black copal, copal gum.