(From be/in, Arabic,) also called balanus myrep-sica, glans unguentaria, nux ben, nux unguentaria moris, Coatlis. The oily acorn, oily nut, or ben nut, probably from the guillandina moringa Lin. Sp. Pi. 546. Wahl and Wildenow have formed a new genus for this species with the appellation of hyperanthera. Loureiro styles it anonia moranga.

It is a whitish nut, of the size of a small filbert, roundish, triangular, with a kernel covered with a white skin. It grows spontaneously in the East Indies and America; and is brought also from Arabia.

These kernels have a nauseous bitter, oily taste, arc purgative, occasion a nausea and colic: on expression they yield one-fourth of their weight of a yellow oil, called oleum myrepsicum; balaninum oleum, almost insipid and flavourless; for the nauseous bitter remains behind. This oil does not grow rancid by long keeping, as is common with expressed oils, on account of which it is used as the basis of odoriferous unguents and perfumes, and would be highly valuable for ointments were it easily procured. It is impregnated with the odour of jasmine, and other flowers, by stratifying them with cotton dipped in the oil, and repeating the process with fresh flowers until the oil becomes sufficiently odorous, after which it is squeezed out from the cotton in a press. This is also a name of the behen.

It is generally supposed that the lignum nephriticum is the wood of the tree which bears these nuts: q. v.

There is another species of ben much larger than the above. Monardus calls it ben magnum, seu avellana purgatrix, the great ben or purging filbert. It purges and vomits violently.