Dragon's Blood: Four Plants, One Name

Table of Contents

1. The Problem With a Colour-Based Name
2. Croton lechleri: The Amazonian Latex
3. Dracaena cinnabari: The Socotra Dragon Tree
4. Chinese Dragon's Blood From Dracaena cochinchinensis
5. The Palm Resin: Daemonorops draco
6. A Fourth Family and Other Crotons
7. How Laboratories Tell Them Apart
8. Why the Mix-Up Matters for Reading Research
9. Scarce Trees and Supply
10. Key Research Papers
11. Connections

The Problem With a Colour-Based Name

Common names in herbal medicine often describe what something looks like or does rather than what it is. "Dragon's blood" describes a deep red colour. A 2019 analytical chemistry paper in Phytochemical Analysis reported that dragon's blood can come from at least four entirely different plant families:

• the asparagus family (Asparagaceae), which includes the Dracaena dragon trees;
• the palm family (Arecaceae), which includes Daemonorops draco;
• a member of the spurge family (the abstract names Chamaesyce; Croton, the Amazonian source, belongs to the same family, Euphorbiaceae);
• the pea family (Fabaceae).

The 2008 review listed the therapeutic uses claimed across these resins: stopping bleeding, diarrhoea, ulcers, microbial and viral infections, wound healing, tumours, inflammation and oxidation. It also noted non-medical uses as a colouring material, a varnish, and in folk magic. Because the same uses are claimed for chemically different materials, a claim made for "dragon's blood" in general says little about any one of them.

Croton lechleri: The Amazonian Latex

The plant this wing is about. Croton lechleri is a tree of the upper Amazon, collected for one survey at 22 sites across northern Peru and Ecuador. Cutting its bark releases a red latex known as sangre de drago or sangre de grado.

• Form: a liquid latex, not a dried resin.
• Main chemistry: proanthocyanidins dominate, according to a 2025 review; the alkaloid taspine is the only alkaloid in the latex, at about 9% of its dry weight on average. Smaller amounts of diterpenoids, sterols, saponins and other phenolic compounds are also present.
• Variation: three chemical types of the tree, defined by their leaf alkaloids, are distributed across different areas.
• Best-known product: crofelemer, a purified proanthocyanidin approved in the United States in 2012 for non-infectious diarrhoea in adults with HIV on antiretroviral therapy.

A related South American species, Croton palanostigma, also yields a dark red sap sold as dragon's blood. A 2013 Brazilian study described dragon's blood as a dark-red sap produced by species of the genus Croton, with "scarce data about its safe use in humans", and found the C. palanostigma sap genotoxic in mice. Taspine was the main compound identified in it.

Dracaena cinnabari: The Socotra Dragon Tree

Dracaena cinnabari is found only on Socotra, an island belonging to Yemen; the archipelago is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Its deep red resin is the dragon's blood of Arabian tradition.

• Names. A 2021 ethnobotanical study recorded the most common local name for the dragon's blood trees (D. cinnabari, D. serrulata and D. ombet) as "ahrieb", and for the resin as "dum al-akhawin", Arabic for "blood of the two brothers". Mixed and cooked products made from it are called "eda'a".
• History in place names. The same study recorded 301 place names in four areas of Socotra. Six referred to the dragon tree, which the author interpreted as marking remnants of once-larger populations, consistent with climate models suggesting the tree used to be more widespread.
• Traditional uses. A 2021 review describes folk use for injuries of the skin, teeth and eyes, for "blood stasis", pain and digestive diseases.
• Chemistry. Completely different from the Croton latex: the same review lists a biflavonoid called cinnabarone, triflavonoids, metacyclophanes, chalcones, dihydrochalcones, sterols and terpenoids. It contains no taspine.
• A laboratory example. A 2022 study isolated two chalcone compounds from the resin and found that they reduced hepatitis B surface antigen production in infected liver cells in culture. This is a cell-culture finding only.

Chinese Dragon's Blood From Dracaena cochinchinensis

A 2024 study defines "Chinese dragon's blood" as the red resin of Dracaena cochinchinensis, one of many Dracaena species with red resin. A 2021 review in the American Journal of Chinese Medicine found:

• dragon's blood mainly refers to the crimson resin of many Dracaena species, used in Arabic, African, traditional Chinese and Thai medicine for over 1,000 years to heal wounds, relieve pain, stop bleeding, and treat diarrhoea, dysentery and ulcers;
• 11 Dracaena species and 3 subspecies are reported to produce red resin;
• over 300 compounds have been isolated from Dracaena species, mainly flavonoids, steroids and phenolics;
• the review stated that no apparent side effects or toxicity had been reported.

In China the use of this resin extends to heart and brain conditions. The 2024 study, in Phytomedicine, described Chinese dragon's blood as "widely used to treat cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in China" and tested a capsule of its total phenolic compounds, used in China for ischaemic stroke, in rats subjected to a heart attack-like injury. Given for 28 days beforehand, it reduced the area of damaged heart muscle and markers of oxidative stress. This is an animal and cell study, several of its authors are affiliated with a pharmaceutical manufacturer, and it says nothing about Croton latex.

The Palm Resin: Daemonorops draco

The third major source is a palm, Daemonorops draco. The 2019 analytical paper states that the current pharmacopoeia it refers to recognises this palm as the only "authentic" source of dragon's blood, meaning that within that regulatory system, Dracaena and Croton material sold under the name are substitutes.

Its signature compound is dracorhodin, a red flavonoid pigment. The paper's purpose was to screen commercial dragon's blood samples quickly using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, a technique that weighs molecules. Samples from the palm showed clear dracorhodin peaks; samples from Dracaena cinnabari and Dracaena cochinchinensis instead showed their own indicator compounds, loureirin A and B.

The fact that such a screening method was developed for commercial samples shows that what is sold under the name is not always what the label implies.

A Fourth Family and Other Crotons

The 2019 paper lists the pea family (Fabaceae) as a fourth source of dragon's blood, alongside a member of the spurge family. Its abstract does not name the species, and none of the studies in our citation pack examined a pea-family dragon's blood, so this article does not describe it further.

Within the spurge family, more than one Croton species is sold as dragon's blood. Croton lechleri and Croton palanostigma both appear in the research, and both contain taspine. The 2002 Peru and Ecuador survey showed that even within Croton lechleri the leaves of different populations have different alkaloid profiles. "Croton dragon's blood" is therefore itself a variable category.

How Laboratories Tell Them Apart

Because the name does not identify the plant, chemistry does. The studies in our pack use indicator compounds:

• Croton lechleri latex: taspine as the sole latex alkaloid, and proanthocyanidins as the main constituents. Both are measured by liquid chromatography.
• Daemonorops draco (palm): dracorhodin.
• Dracaena cinnabari and Dracaena cochinchinensis: loureirin A and B; D. cinnabari also has characteristic compounds such as cinnabarone.

The 2019 paper presents MALDI-TOF as a fast first screen for commercial samples and notes that liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry, though more definitive, is slow and costly for routine large-scale screening. For a shopper, none of this is available at the point of sale, and a product label naming only "dragon's blood" does not say which of these materials is inside.

Why the Mix-Up Matters for Reading Research

Mixing up the sources leads to errors in both directions.

• Borrowed benefit. The 2015 meta-analysis of 14 trials (618 patients) that associated "Resina Draconis" with higher pressure-ulcer healing rates studied the Chinese resin. Quoting it in support of Amazonian Croton sap applies evidence from one plant to another.
• Borrowed safety. The 2021 Dracaena review states that no apparent side effects or toxicity have been reported for Dracaena dragon's blood. That statement covers Dracaena resin. It does not cover Croton latex, which contains taspine, has tested mutagenic in bacterial and yeast assays, and comes from a genus in which a related sap was genotoxic in mice.
• Borrowed approval. Crofelemer comes only from Croton lechleri. It gives no support to Dracaena or palm products.
• Unnamed species. A 2024 wound-dressing study and a 2020 cosmetics review both refer to "dragon's blood" without naming a species in their abstracts, so their findings cannot be assigned to any particular plant.

Before applying any dragon's blood study, the first question is which plant was used.

Scarce Trees and Supply

Several of these trees are under pressure. The 2021 Dracaena review described the resources as "extremely deficient", said several Dracaena species are in threatened status, and noted that use is restricted by limited supply and by an unclear understanding of how the trees form resin. Its authors called for expanded cultivation and better methods of inducing resin formation.

On Socotra, the 2021 place-name study concluded that Dracaena cinnabari once grew more widely than it does today. Scarcity can also encourage substitution of one dragon's blood for another, which is part of the reason screening methods like MALDI-TOF were developed.

Key Research Papers

1. Gupta D, Bleakley B, Gupta RK. Dragon's blood: botany, chemistry and therapeutic uses. Journal of ethnopharmacology. 2008;115(3):361-80. PubMed PMID: 18060708
2. Wu C, Cai XQ, Chang Y, et al. Rapid identification of dragon blood samples from Daemonorops draco, Dracaena cinnabari and Dracaena cochinchinensis by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. Phytochemical analysis : PCA. 2019;30(6):720-726. PubMed PMID: 31313432
3. Liu Y, Zhao X, Yao R, et al. Dragon's Blood from Dracaena Worldwide: Species, Traditional Uses, Phytochemistry and Pharmacology. The American journal of Chinese medicine. 2021;49(6):1315-1367. PubMed PMID: 34247562
4. Al-Awthan YS, Bahattab OS. Phytochemistry and Pharmacological Activities of Dracaena cinnabari Resin. BioMed research international. 2021;2021:8561696. PubMed PMID: 34337055
5. Al-Okaishi A. Exploring the historical distribution of Dracaena cinnabari using ethnobotanical knowledge on Socotra Island, Yemen. Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine. 2021;17(1):22. PubMed PMID: 33794944
6. Mothana RA, Arbab AH, ElGamal AA, et al. Isolation and Characterization of Two Chalcone Derivatives with Anti-Hepatitis B Virus Activity from the Endemic Socotraen Dracaena cinnabari (Dragon's Blood Tree). Molecules (Basel, Switzerland). 2022;27(3). PubMed PMID: 35164217
7. Yang PX, Fan XX, Liu MX, et al. Longxuetongluo Capsule alleviate ischemia/reperfusion induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis through modulating oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. Phytomedicine : international journal of phytotherapy and phytopharmacology. 2024;134:155993. PubMed PMID: 39244943
8. Milanowski DJ, Winter RE, Elvin-Lewis MP, et al. Geographic distribution of three alkaloid chemotypes of Croton lechleri. Journal of natural products. 2002;65(6):814-9. PubMed PMID: 12088421
9. de Albuquerque RDDG, León-Vargas FR, Carrasco-Montañez DD, et al. A Review on Phytochemistry and Recent Pharmacology of Dragon's Blood (Croton lechleri), a Multifunctional Ethnomedicinal Resource from the Amazon Forest. Planta medica. 2025;91(8):409-418. PubMed PMID: 40043740
10. Maistro EL, Ganthous G, Machado Mda S, et al. Dragon's blood Croton palanostigma induces genotoxic effects in mice. Journal of ethnopharmacology. 2013;147(2):406-11. PubMed PMID: 23528364
11. Xu J, Xiong T, Yang Y, et al. Resina Draconis as a topical treatment for pressure ulcers: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Wound repair and regeneration : official publication of the Wound Healing Society [and] the European Tissue Repair Society. 2015;23(4):565-74. PubMed PMID: 25968301
12. Mahboubi Kancha M, Mehrabi M, Aghaie F, et al. Preparation and characterization of PVA/chitosan nanofibers loaded with Dragon's blood or poly helixan as wound dressings. International journal of biological macromolecules. 2024;272(Pt 2):132844. PubMed PMID: 38834119
13. Nguyen JK, Masub N, Jagdeo J. Bioactive ingredients in Korean cosmeceuticals: Trends and research evidence. Journal of cosmetic dermatology. 2020;19(7):1555-1569. PubMed PMID: 32100931
14. Frampton JE. Crofelemer: a review of its use in the management of non-infectious diarrhoea in adult patients with HIV/AIDS on antiretroviral therapy. Drugs. 2013;73(10):1121-9. PubMed PMID: 23807722

PubMed Topic Searches

1. PubMed: Dracaena dragon's blood
2. PubMed: Dracaena cinnabari (Socotra)
3. PubMed: Daemonorops draco
4. PubMed: Dracorhodin
5. PubMed: Croton palanostigma

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Connections

• All Herbs
• Dragon's Blood (Croton lechleri) — the main topic page
• Dragon's Blood: Benefits Deep Dive — the evidence ledger
• Crofelemer: From Sap to Licensed Drug — the Croton-only drug
• Wound Healing and Insect Bites — the Croton skin evidence
• Taspine, Toxicity and Safety Unknowns — the Croton alkaloid
• Skin, Wound and Topical Herbs — the parent category
• Myrrh — another ancient resin traded across Arabia
• Crape Jasmine — another latex-bearing wound plant
• Cat's Claw — another Amazonian medicinal plant
• Hepatitis B — the virus in the Socotra chalcone study
• Wound Healing — remedies and evidence for wound care

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