valonia

Meaning

Noun

• The European evergreen oak, Quercus macrolepis (species), now Quercus ithaburensis subsp. macrolepis (subspecies), or Quercus aegilops (species).
• The dried acorn cups of this tree, which are used to make a black dye, used in tanning.

Origin

• From the Venetian name Valona of the now Albanian city Vlorë around which it grows unlike in Italy; but an occasional acquaintance at first and one of the principal sources of tannin in the English-speaking world only in the late 19th century, largely imported from the Ottoman Empire, Smyrna being the main trading centre for it, whence to Trieste it passed the first time in 1842 to reach the Austro-Hungarian leather industry and becoming popular in the German Reich only by the 1880s.