Packaged aloes from Socotra and the Caribbean

Title: Packaged aloes from Socotra and the Caribbean
Date Created: pre-1898; pre-1961
Creator: Unknown; Unknown
Identifier: Cat. no. 36522; Cat. No 36520
Original Location: Socotra and India; Caribbean, probably Barbados
Current Location: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Economic Botany Collection
Description: These two items from the Kew Economic Botany Collection show the ways in which aloes were packaged for international trade. Comparing the two distinct methods used to collect, prepare, and transport these specimens demonstrates how the international drugs trade was shaped by African and Native American technologies.
Medicinal “aloes” are made from the leaf gel of several different species of the plant. The drug is a black colour and looks rather like the resin of a tree. The first image (Cat. no. 36522) shows Aloe perryi from Socotra, a small island off the coast of Yemen. These aloes were considered the best for medicinal use from at least the 1st century until the 19th century. The second image (Cat. No 36520) shows aloes from the Caribbean. These aloes come from the plant now known as Aloe vera. Both these types of aloe circulated internationally, but their packaging reflects the specific technologies and environments of the places where they were produced.
In Socotra, the method of making aloes involved draining the leaf sap into a monkey skin. The sap was left to harden in the sun and then packaged in the same skin for export. Although these aloes come from Socotra, they were sold to traders from western India and marketed internationally from there. This explains the reference to the “East Indies” on the label.
In the Caribbean between the 17th and 19th centuries, aloes were exported in gourds, and as such were often known as “gourd aloes”. In both Africa and the Americas, the gourd is used as a container also known as a calabash. In Mexico, it was used to contain pulque, the fermented juice of the agave plant. It was the confusion between agave (also called Aloe americana) and aloe that originally gave rise to the name Aloe vera.
Credit: Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, Economic Botany Collection. CC-BY licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Link: https://ecbot.science.kew.org/read_ecbot.php?catno=36522; https://ecbot.science.kew.org/read_ecbot.php?catno=36520
Contributor: Dr. Anna Winterbottom, Research Associate, McGill University