A bright yellow-orange resin obtained from trees in Southeast Asia, used historically as a pigment, dye, and strong laxative medicine.
From French 'gomme-gutte' and Cambodian origins, ultimately derived from Cambodia where the tree Garcinia hanburyi is native. The English form 'gamboge' evolved through trade route borrowings and 17th-century European commerce with Asia.
Gamboge was literally the medieval Instagram filter—artists obsessed over its golden-yellow hue! It's still so powerful as a laxative that it was banned in some European medicines, yet painters couldn't live without it. The tree that produces it wasn't even scientifically described until the 1800s, yet Europeans had been trading for it for centuries.
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