MASTIC or MASTICH, a resinous exudation obtained from the lentisk, Pistacia Lentiscus, an evergreen shrub of the family Anacardiaceae. The lentisk or mastic plant is indigenous to the Mediterranean coast region from Syria to Spain, but grows also in Portugal, Morocco and the Canaries. The production of the substance has been, since the time of Dioscorides, almost ex clusively confined to the island of Chios. The shrubs are about 6 ft. high. The resin is contained in the bark and not in the wood, and in order to collect it numerous vertical incisions are made, during June, July and August, in the stem and chief branches. The resin speedily exudes and hardens into oval tears, which are collected every fifteen days. The collection is repeated several times between June and September, a fine tree being found to yield about 8 or Io lb of mastic during the season. Mastic occurs in commerce in the form of roundish tears about the size of peas.
They are transparent, with a glassy fracture, of a pale yellow or faint greenish tinge, which darkens slowly with age. Its use in medicine is obsolete, and it is employed for making varnish.
Pistacia Khinjuk and P. cabulica, trees growing throughout Sindh, Baluchistan and Cabul, yield a kind of mastic. In Algeria P. atlantica yields a solid resin. Cape mastic is the produce of Euryops multifidus, the resin bush, or harpuis bosch of the Boers —a plant of the Compositae family. Dammar resin is sometimes sold under the name of mastic. The West Indian mastic tree is the Bursera gummifera and the Peruvian mastic is Schinus Molle. The name mastic tree is also applied to a timber tree, Sideroxylon Mastichodendron, family Sapotaceae, which grows in the West Indies and on the coast of Florida.