Boswellia Frereana

Note Profile

Botanical

About

Frankincense from Boswellia frereana, the Somali species sold as Maydi or Coptic frankincense. It smells fresh and pine-like over a deep woody resin, with a fruity sweetness underneath and a faint citrus lift on top.

Scent Profile

Amber_resinous leads, because every source frames the material as a frankincense resin first. Eden Botanicals names an 'intense, deep woody/resinous undertone' and Living Libations opens with 'Classic Frankincense with a freshly activating woody-resinous undertone'. Dry_woody is the wood half of that same pairing, set below the resin because both sources call it the undertone rather than the aroma. Aromatic_herbal is the pine. Eden's lead phrase is 'very fresh, diffusive, clear, pine-like aroma without any harsh notes', and this is the facet that separates frereana from the honeyed Omani green grade. It is held below the resin because only one of the four sources leads with it. Citrus is Eden's 'slight citrus/coniferous top note', marked as a trace claim, so it sits below the parent frankincense. Fruity is Living Libations' 'fascinating fruity-sweetness', a single secondary claim. Earthy rests on two thin one-line trade descriptions, House of Frankincense's 'rich, warm, and earthy' and Glastonbury Incense's 'sweet, earthy'; both are marketing copy with no detail, which is why it stops with a spread. Green, cooling_mentholic and fresh_spice are the conifer terpenes that come with the pine reading. Smoky is left rather than zero: no fetched source mentions smoke, but this is a resin sold to be burned and the sibling species carry a little.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~18h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Woody & Earthy, Green & Aromatic

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Resin of Boswellia frereana, tapped in the Cal Madow mountains of northern Somalia and traded as Maydi. Wikipedia also records the name Coptic frankincense. The tears are hydrodistilled or steam-distilled to an essential oil. It is a different species from the Boswellia sacra of Oman and the Boswellia papyrifera of Ethiopia, both already held here. Living Libations gives the chemical separation from the common Somali frankincense: Boswellia carterii runs high in alpha-pinene with a little alpha-thujene, while Boswellia frereana inverts that and runs high in alpha-thujene with only a touch of alpha-pinene.

Usage in Perfumery

Used where a frankincense is wanted that reads clean and coniferous rather than sweet or churchy. It sits in incense accords, in resinous ambers, and as a lift under woods. The fresh top is diffusive but the material as a whole is a base resin and holds for most of a day on paper.