A gum resin exuding from the stems of certain Asiatic umbelliferous plants, mostly species of Ferula. The Bubon Galbanum of South Africa furnishes an inferior kind of galbanum. It has an acrid, bitter taste, a strong, unpleasant smell, and is used for medical purposes, also in the arts, as in the manufacture of varnish.

a bitter aromatic gum resin that resembles asafetida

A gum resin valued for its leafy green, soft balsamic odor. Galbanum is used in many fragrances to provide a pleasing freshness, or green lift.

A gum resin that imparts a "green" smell.

Galbanum is an aromatic gum resin, the product of certain Persian plant species, chiefly Ferula gummosa, syn. galbaniflua and Ferula rubricaulis. Galbanum-yielding plants grow plentifully on the slopes of the mountain ranges of northern Iran. It occurs usually in hard or soft, irregular, more or less translucent and shining lumps, or occasionally in separate tears, of a light-brown, yellowish or greenish-yellow colour, and has a disagreeable, bitter taste, a peculiar, somewhat musky odour, and a specific gravity of 1.212.