Oudh

The wood that only becomes precious when it is wounded.

Discover agarwood

A fragrance grown from injury

Agarwood is the dark, resin-soaked heartwood of Aquilaria trees, and one of the most valued natural materials on earth.

Healthy Aquilaria wood is pale, light and almost scentless. When the tree is wounded by insects, storms or fungal infection, it defends itself by producing a dense, aromatic resin. Over years, that resin saturates the heartwood and turns it dark brown or black.

The result goes by many names: oud in Arabic, gaharu in Malay and Indonesian, jinko in Japanese, chen xiang in Chinese, and aloeswood in English. Its scent is deep and layered: sweet, woody, balsamic, leathery, sometimes animalic, and it lingers for hours.

Aquilaria grows in the rainforests of South and Southeast Asia, from Assam and Bangladesh through Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to Papua New Guinea.

GaharuMalay · Indonesian
沈香Chinese · Japanese
AgarHindi · Bengali
AloeswoodEnglish

Up close

Dark, dense and streaked with resin. This is what the wood and its oil look like.

Raw heartwood, darkened by resin
Chips, ready to warm on charcoal
OUDPURE AGARWOOD OIL
Oud oil, distilled from resinous wood

A stylised cross-section: resin gathers around the wound and darkens the wood.

How oudh forms

No one can order the process. It depends on the tree, the wound and time.

The wound

Insects, broken branches or a fungal infection, often Phialophora species, breach the tree.

The defence

The tree floods the damaged heartwood with aromatic resin rich in sesquiterpenes and chromones.

The wait

Resin builds up slowly. Rich wood often takes decades, and wild trees may take far longer.

Harvest and sorting

Resinous wood is cut from the pale timber and graded by darkness, density, oil content and scent.

Transformation

The wood is chipped, ground, burned or distilled into the forms below.

What agarwood becomes

From a single piece of resinous wood come oil, incense and perfume.

Reading the grades

There is no single global standard, but buyers commonly judge wood by these qualities.

Colour and density

Darker, heavier pieces hold more resin. Very resinous wood can sink in water.

Scent on heat

Fine wood opens slowly when warmed, moving from sweet to woody to deeply resinous.

Origin

Cambodian, Indian, Laotian and Vietnamese wood each carry distinct profiles that collectors recognise.

Kyara

In Japan, the rarest, most prized aloeswood is called kyara: soft, bitter-sweet and extremely scarce.

Rare by nature, protected by law

Centuries of demand have pushed wild Aquilaria trees toward scarcity. Since 2005, Aquilaria and Gyrinops species have been listed under CITES Appendix II, which regulates international trade.

Plantations in Vietnam, Thailand, India, Indonesia and elsewhere now grow Aquilaria and induce resin formation deliberately. Cultivated oud is more accessible and eases pressure on wild forests, though its character differs from old wild wood.

When you buy, look for CITES documentation and sellers who can name the species, origin and whether the wood is wild or cultivated.