Agarwood (Aquilaria spp.)
An honest report about a Southeast Asian aromatic
Tulíp traveled in Cambodia for a time across an area previously controlled by the Khmer Rouge, and she’s agreed to satisfy our curiosity with a presentation of her experience.
“So you’ve all read about the Cambodian killing fields. And perhaps you’ve heard about the infamous killing banyan tree against which victimized children were beaten to death. But you probably don’t know about the killing branches of the same tree, the sharpened palm fronds used by the Khmer to decapitate those who didn’t fall in line, those who questioned angkar, those so-called bad elements.”
Today’s salon theme … aloeswood.
“Agarwood oleoresin is complex (no really, really complex), a singular olfactive formulation like nothing else (no really, there is nothing else like it).”
Aloeswood chunks and chips and powders and oils for incense and medicine and perfumery have been traded for millennia, between Far and Middle and Near East. In particular, Chinese concerns since long ago have been importing, then grading and brokering these materials, eliciting interest in faraway places. And in Japan, an exacting explorative ritual of incense appreciation has developed, particularly among Buddhist adherents. And in the Arabian Gulf region, where oud perfumes have historically been associated with social status and good fortune, cultural engrossment with the hypnotic oil is an institution still evolving.
“And no surprise, the biggest buyers are sheikh tycoons,” Saffron adds.
These cultures are so disparate yet they have a legacy in common — the spinning of stories to accommodate the imaginations of aloeswood patrons. Most traders are parties to this creative activity of weaving tales of intrigue (mind you, accounts of exorbitant prices and extortion are not exaggerated myths, and smugglers when spotted have indeed been shot).
“And no surprise, agarwood lately has also been firing fervent interest in … almighty Western society, so short on deep traditions and big on superficial trends,” Saffron adds again.
So how, Tulíp, did you fare over there?
“Well, I was asked out on a date and agreed one time. My escort picked me up with a stolen bicycle and took me to a boxing match between a child and a mentally retarded man.”
First, we should run through, as an overview, the diversity of provenances that reflect upon the numerous appellations and applications, and especially the varied molecular expressions and multiplex properties of the prized botanical materials of our inquiry — so we direct your attention to a taxonomic constellation of trees in Southeast Asia, chiefly but not exclusively species of Aquilaria and Gyrinops that grow within a region roughly delineated as an obtuse triangle enclosed within Bengal and Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea. Included in this broad area are Myanmar, Bangladesh, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Borneo.
“Parents, where I stayed, were continually yelling at their kids to stop playing in the minefields.”
The indigenous production of oleoresin comprising the characteristically sublime scent principles is of great interest as it regards artificial inducement, efforts to imitate the natural process. Specialists speculate about manners of physical trauma to wild trees, say, by stem-boring larvae or storm winds, actions they then mimic by inflicting intentional injuries with nails or screws or chisels or drills, you name it.
“There are oceans of notions in the matter of actions that set in motion the promotion of the perfumed potions in Nature,” Saffron says.
The consultants diversely cite microbiological agents of natural infection, throw around Latin denominations of fungal taxa, designate primary and secondary colonizers, organisms they then incorporate into simulating programs of inoculation. And methods are also considered to recreate, with plastic or metal pipes left embedded in heartwood, conditions of continuous aeration that are ecologically unremarkable though detrimental to the individual plant.
“Altogether these make for a parade of solicitations by advisers and theorizers and professional players and purveyors of kits with instructions and secret formulas and … promises of big returns on investments.”
The state of the science leads us to deemphasize infesting agents and appreciate more the plurality of reasons that defensive barriers of callus tissue are not formed and thus tree injuries are not morphologically closed and sealed.
“The failure of wounds to heal may be due to termites or wasps or ants or borers or fungi or bacteria or whichever, now facilitated or forced by Nature-apers who apply sugars or chitin or chloride salts or formic acid or whichever.”
And such pathological breaches encourage chemical barriers to proliferate within the tree, eventually bringing about the fortuitous obstructive blockages … of redolent resin… voilà, the magical matter — agar (the agar in the agarwood).
Without delay, Tulíp sinks a glowing red chunk of oxidizer-free bamboo charcoal into a porcelain incense censer filled with odorless rice ash that she has previously heaped and fluffed up with a chopstick … then, with a flat metal spatula she mounds and tamps the ash into the shape of a volcano, the mouth of which will become the escape outlet for the heat generated by the combustion within … with a feather she cleans the stray powder on the kodo cup rim, then places over the vent-hole a thin sterling-silver-lined sheet of mica mineral, and on top of that plate a chip of jinko which immediately begins to warm … thereupon arise the aromatic vapors, which she trajects by the way she clasps the cup with both hands and leaves an opening, instructing us on how to bow our heads toward the gap between her right thumb and forefinger … “and listen.”
This venerable ceremonious discrimination of incense woods is maybe for me excessively formal? what with all the manuals and rules and pricey utensils and emphasis on erudition? Yes, it’s an elegant way to embrace mystery and quiet the mind, and the time-honored practice is contemplative and refined, but the highbrow references and limits on conversation?
“Listening (are you listening?) is a term we use to denote a meditative form of focusing, about beholding by holding an awareness of an etherealization, about heeding the contours of fragrant intonation.”
Just now, the salonists begin to relate their impressions, “Evokes an ambience that’s ancient and intricate, salty like briny, or mineralic? — tangled, meaning involved, savory and softly balsamic — resonantly resinous and robustly dirty or murky as in fusty and all but gusty as in etheric as in atmospheric — heavy and heady near to racy, the whiffy balm of backnotes upon dissipation becoming dusky as in obscure.”
“This next helping, a sample of Indonesian oud, transmits a deeply layered declaration of water and air with accents of camphor carob and pepper, lacquer lichen and leather, vintage sandalwood and mature cow manure — the Burmese mediates a scentful communion between the expression of old-cushiony damp-mossy rotting wood and that of sharp vetiverol-laced parched charred wood — we sense that these are undomesticated, convoluted and dimensional and radiant — and lingering (displaying a tenacity on skin to withstand ten showers).”
“It’s conceivable that distillates of aged deposits are here perceivable? namely, those of resin from centuries-old remnants of Aquilaria filaria trees occasionally still excavated from swamps in New Guinea? — I’ve no idea.”
The greater the number of dense pockets, the more streaked with black resin, the darker the costlier, whereas lesser-quality whitish wood is chopped shredded soaked distilled and redistilled to give a light-colored oil solid at room temperature that goes by the designation boyah. This commonplace value-added product of many cultivated Aquilaria plantations is considered lacking and greasy compared to actual oud, in that sesquiterpenes are sparsely represented.
“Nonetheless, boyah is frequently incorporated by Middle Eastern concerns into their commercial fragrances. But not before they touch it up, of course, with extraneous odor compounds. And the spent leftover dust after the distillation often finds its way into rolled joss-sticks.”
The capture of boyah volatiles may go for weeks or even months to wrest every last distinctive molecule lodged in the tree tissues, so much so that the expense of the oil reflects that of all the firewood burned. On the other hand, the exacting technique to produce top-notch yellow or red, green or brown oud, which requires partially infected heartwood of freshly felled wild living trees, goes for a day or perhaps a week.
“Whoa, this next effluviates an effusive funky jolt of fumes, which diffuse a suffusive cloud of bodily emissions unmentionably intrusive, as if emanating from a badly ventilated or neglected gym locker, or from a worn bicycle seat many years used, with perspiration and intimate seepages circumfused — we speak of such animal elements as air perfumed from down there (it’s not a technical term) — yet the potent principles are embedded within the full bouquet, tempered and enveloped by a fortification of warm ambery wine-like metabolites that give a sensual context — are we reviewing the Vietnamese? — check for allusive references to labdanum gasoline tobacco and maple syrup — and a serving of something chemical or medical maybe, say, a wound dressing?”
“There are lots of unusual oxygenated compounds,” Saffron sets about to cover the subject of chemical profiles.
Much as the kitchen of Creation stocks ingredients put to use by plants representing widely divergent lines of descent, still many distinguishing components of Aquilaria wood and oil are molecules absent from most menus for biosynthesis, they’re not always on hand, not readily supplied as common provisions for metabolism.
Saffron cites a few of such constituents, “Jinkoheremol and agarospirol are sesquiterpenols, add to those agarofurans and karanones, and most notably chromones,” turns out to be the extent to which she’ll take up chemistry today.
Tulíp is calling up more memories, “In Cambodia I rented a room for a spell, near an infected specimen yet to be harvested, but my hosts there spoke of another landmark, and soon after took me to a well-known place nearby where a tamarind tree marked the site of numerous Khmer mass killings. They described how people would be made to lie face to the ground, their hands tied, how each person’s head would be jerked back vigorously by the hair so that they couldn’t scream, how sometimes the executioner would put his fingers into their eye sockets and then slash their throats. They went on and on in such detail, explaining that when the killer’s wrist would ache from the repetitions he would just stab their necks, and when his body would tire from bending down he’d just stomp on their backs with one foot — ”
Saffron cuts in, “…whoosh, are we ready to continue listening in the sense of witnessing, which is our business, bearing witness? This following is a Cambodian distillate from an enterprising partisan known as Ensar, who posts poetic exposition online to publicize his herculean efforts to provide the rarest of rare boutique extracts.”
“Wait, this next is a Chinese sample, seems to reflect more butcher than barnyard, reportedly medicinal and animalic but this is a full-on castoreum composition — tones of dried fruit and smoked vegetables send off effects recalling moldy towels? — shades of sugary guiacwood and warmed spices set off effects recalling mildewed hay? — and lets off a tart phenolic note-de-tête? — and lets go a steamy floral note-de-coeur? — and lets free a buttery agrestic hereafter.”
Try putting a small dab on your wrist in the morning, then record all your interactions in a journal and take stock later of how things went, at the end of the day, see what you take away.
Tulíp delivers the unwelcome news, “Sorry to break the news, but yes it is true, that the World’s most valuable incense, the famed wood of the gods is exhausted, wasted depleted and used up, spent and done for, that real agaru or gaharu or gahuru or whichever name you assign, agarwood aloeswood eaglewood agilawood or jinkoh, is no longer extant, sorry to let you know, that the fanfare is just a show, that yes these days most chips are treated, professed to be authentic but actually soaked in industrial aroma-chemicals, perhaps dipped in wax or even audaciously painted in streaks of black (dubbed black-magic wood) to culminate the ruse, I’m so sorry to break the news, and also sorry to bring to light, but yes you guessed right, that not coincidentally the World’s most expensive essential oil is finished, no more, over with, the pure extracts gone, that real ud or ude or however you say or spell it, ud ood oode oude oudh or aoud, is now synthetic all or at least in part, ulterior manipulation a certainty, extended with phthalates or diluted with liquid paraffin (or stretched with pork fat, what?) or adulterated with Nature-stranger compounds or sometimes an inferior grade such as boyah doctored with petroleum-based odorants, which are often proprietary.”
Acrimonious arguments persist between the incense and oil camps of advocacy over which customary practice is more culpable for the near disappearance of those prized occasional infected trove trees that deteriorate spontaneously over dozens of years all the while internally secreting bounties of precious pathological oleoresin.
“The incense aficionados are just blowing smoke.”
“Both contingents of enthusiasm are censurable. But in any event, their influences are dwarfed by the crisis of shrinking old-growth woodland stands due to industrial deforestation.”
One thing is clear, that small-scale growers and producers as usual (as always) get left behind. The wood and oil products of the planted and pestered and pushed trees are unable to rival the abundant exudations of counterparts in the wild that are left to decline in peace, for long stretches unmolested by human treasure hunters. Yet provincial aspirants with minor plantations or operations are burdened with all the bureaucratic certification requirements that were ostensibly enacted to protect threatened species.
“Unintended consequences are by and large visited on the vulnerable.”
“Top sinking-quality grades of heartwood, so very saturated with resin that they become black and sink in water, go mostly to ready representatives positioned along rural trade routes, to proxies retained by collectors, for instance Chinese business barons or Japanese incense companies, while lesser grades destined for distillation go to Arabs by way of markets in Bangkok Singapore Hong Kong and Mumbai. In this way, the most prized materials spike in cost, advantaging the advantaged and privileging the privileged.”
The wealthy become wealthier, those rolling in money roll some more, while in their unforgiving wake most everyone else struggles to get by. The pattern repeats and repeats, high and low and all the time.
“And these samples making their way around the table?”
We hope they’re genuine, inasmuch as we procured the various dollops from foremost aloeswood experts and authenticity advocators, one of whom we found putzing around in the back of her old apothecary location on Bleecker Street in New York.
“If the Assami oud is bona fide as represented then it fulfills its bill, coming on as musty and musky both, like a penetrating perfume distilled from honey-soaked straw collected after lying for days on the ground at a petting zoo, then subject to thick smoke and glandular secretions of feral male animals — and fresh excretions of furry warm-blooded beings.”
They don’t all elicit in the same way, but all the same I wouldn’t say, that I know about fecal bouquets, having made no detailed studies.
“Dabbing just a spot of cultivated oud from India onto this carte à sentir appears to turn loose or bring out indications that flash about, showing something like a deep-going low-pitched presence with dark syrupy currents of cardboard and coffee and jungle molasses — and puts forth aspects of turned earth and liquorice and moist cloth fronted by touches of cocoa and cassis and vanilla on a flimsy footing of wet rainforest vegetation.”
“All over that area where I stayed, it’s now hard to imagine, during the dry season, cracks in the parched soil would be revealed, through which vapors of putrefaction would escape, issued from bodies of the murdered, still decaying after all those years.”
