Dragons Blood

Organic Red Ale w/ Rainforest Herbs

A spicy sweet red ale with Dragon’s Blood, Annato, Fisheye Peppers & light Hops

About the “Dragons Blood” trees we are Planting / Protecting:

Use: medicinal

Family: Euphorbiaceae

Sangre de grado (Dragons Blood) is a medicinal tree that prefers to grow in the bajío– lower-lying areas of the jungle prone to seasonal flooding or at least highly humid conditions– and particularly in the sunny conditions along the edges of rivers and streams.  Camino Verde’s center at Baltimori, which is a bajío area with extensive riverfront, has proven an excellent site for the propogation of this valuable tree, with forty specimens planted in 2006.

The rusty red blood-like resin of the tree serves as an important medicine and commercial product.  Wade Davis writes in One River, “Placed on an open wound, the resin dries into an antiseptic seal, a protective cover known to the Indians as a liquid bandage.  In ways that modern science has yet to understand, the compounds in the resin accelerate healing in a remarkable manner.  Wounds and lacerations that in the tropics would normally fester instead heal within days, without infection and without leaving a scar.”

Davis’s observations (or rather Shultes’s, who Davis is citing) are consistent with how Sangre de grado is used in Peru, although it is also included in many internal remedies for liver- and blood-cleansing.  The resin is effective and well-known enough that it is easily purchased even in high Andean and coastal cities of Peru.  Due to a relatively short shelf-life of a few weeks (which can be prolonged by introduction of alcohol or some other simple preservative), this medicine has yet to find widespread use outside of the Amazonian nations, where sangre de grado products should be regarded as of suspicious efficacy unless containing alcohol.

Granted an appropriate preservation method is employed, sangre de grado has the potential for widespread use around the world, and as an important cash crop for jungle agroforesters.  The speed of growth in ideal conditions (reaching a stately height and a diameter of a foot in four or five years) also makes the tree an attractive option for economically-minded reforestation.  Because of the resin’s usefulness as a simple and powerful household cure, sangre de grado trees planted near a family’s river port are a common sight.

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.