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agarwood
Name of a fragrant
residue that forms in the heartwood of Aquilaria trees, especially
Aquilaria malaccensis, i.e. trees in the family Thymelaeaceae, as a
result of an infection by a type of mold known as Phialophora
parasitica. In the wild this infection is caused by damage to the
tree by external forces, such as grazing animals or ants that bore
in its trunk, and bring in the fungus spores, which results in the
growth of this specific type of fungal infection, inside the tree.
Prior to infection the healthy wood inside Aquilaria trees is pale,
odourless and worthless, but its natural defence to this fungal
attack is to produce a stress-induced aromatic resin which is dark
and moist, and known as aloes. To man-produce agarwood, the
Aquilaria tree needs first be infected artificially with this mold
and over the course of several years the aloes slowly imbeds in the
heartwood to eventually form agarwood. This resinous wood is used in
incense and perfume, as well as in carvings, and is one of the
world's most expensive raw materials. To harvest the agarwood it needs to be separated from the healthy Aquilaria wood
around it. These cultivated chips of carved-out wood are known as
‘oud’
and are commonly used as incense. In Thai, agarwood is known as
mai kritsana, literally
‘Krishna
wood’ and referring to the dark
colour of the wood compared to the pale colour of the uninfected
Aquilaria wood that surrounds it,
as in
Sanskrit
Krishna literally means the
‘dark one’.
First grade natural agarwood can allegedly fetch as much as 100,000
usd per kilogram on the international market, whereas aged oud oil
distilled from oud chips by steam can cost as much as 80,000 usd per
litre and as such known by traders by its nickname
‘liquid
gold’.
With the depletion of wild trees from indiscriminate cutting for
agarwood Aquilaria trees have now become an endangered species
bordering on extinction and since trees are rarely found infected
naturally in the wild, the production of agarwood nowadays relies
mostly on artificial inoculation of the trees with a microbiological
compound to induce the production of the resin. However, the prices
for artificial agarwood are up to 100 times less than that of
natural agarwood found in the wild. Also known by the names
aloeswood, eaglewood, and gharuwood. In Southeast Asia it is since
millennia known as the
‘wood
of the gods’ and
in the
Mahaparinirvana
Sutra
it is
referred to as
‘heavenly
wood’,
and was used in the cremation of the
Buddha.
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