What Is Aloeswood? The Old Name for Agarwood, Explained for Incense Buyers

So, what is aloeswood? It is agarwood: fragrant, resin-loaded wood from trees of the genus Aquilaria, sold under an English name that predates the word agarwood in common use.^[1]

Why is resinous agarwood scarce? According to Liu et al. (2013), only about 10% of Aquilaria trees form agarwood naturally; the rest stay pale, almost scentless wood unless they are wounded and infected.^[7]

The material is identical whatever the label says. A bag of aloeswood chips, a tin of oud chips and a box of jinkō incense can all contain the same resinated wood. Only the market and the seller's habit change the word.

At our plantation in Guan Zhu Town, Dian Bai District, Maoming, we grow and inoculate Aquilaria sinensis. The same wood is called oud in the Gulf, jinkō in Japan and, by many Western incense brands, aloeswood. Consequently, one material travels under three vocabularies.

According to the CITES Secretariat, every Aquilaria species, the source of aloeswood, has been listed in Appendix II since 2004, so a commercial shipment of the wood usually needs an export permit.

Why Aloeswood Is Not Aloe Vera

The name misleads almost everyone at first. Aloe vera is a succulent in the genus Aloe, grown for the gel inside its leaves. Aloeswood comes from a tropical tree in a completely different plant family, the Thymelaeaceae.^[2]

The two plants share a word by historical accident, not by any botanical link. Aloe vera has no resinated heartwood, and it produces no incense material. Therefore, a product that mixes aloe gel with "aloeswood fragrance" is combining two unrelated things.

This confusion is not only academic. A search or enquiry for "aloe wood" can mean either plant, so it pays to confirm the botanical name before quoting or ordering. A one-line reply with Aquilaria in it settles the question quickly.

The name aloeswood comes from older European words for agarwood, not from the aloe plant. Greek writers called the wood agallochon, and medieval Latin texts used lignum aloes, literally "wood of aloes".^[1]

Most etymologies trace these words back to South Asian names for the wood, such as Sanskrit aguru. Over centuries of trade and translation, the sound drifted towards the familiar word aloe. As a result, two unrelated plants ended up with nearly identical names in European languages.

Agarwood itself reached Europe and the Middle East along long trade routes from South and Southeast Asia. Traders handled it as a luxury aromatic, alongside other woods and resins burned as incense. The name changed many times on the way, while the wood itself did not.

Aloes in Biblical Texts

Many English Bibles mention "aloes" among precious aromatics. Passages in Numbers, Psalms, Proverbs and the Song of Songs place aloes beside myrrh, cassia and cinnamon as fragrances of great value.

Most scholars read these Old Testament aloes as agarwood, because the context is perfume and incense rather than medicine. The King James Version even uses "lign aloes", from the Latin for wood of aloes, in Numbers 24:6.

However, one passage remains genuinely debated. In the Gospel of John, Nicodemus brings myrrh and aloes for the burial of Jesus, and scholars disagree whether that refers to agarwood or to the bitter aloe plant. We note the debate rather than take a side.

For the trade, this history matters mainly as a sales story. Church suppliers and religious bookshops sometimes stock "biblical aloeswood" incense, and they want a material that matches the traditional reading. In that case the honest approach is to supply plantation agarwood and describe it accurately on the label.

From Lign Aloes to Aloeswood

By the twentieth century, English writers used several overlapping names: aloes, lign aloes, aloeswood and eaglewood. Eaglewood probably comes from a Portuguese rendering of an Asian name, again with no link to the bird.

Meanwhile, botanists and the trade gradually settled on agarwood. Today agarwood dominates scientific papers, CITES documents and most wholesale price lists. In contrast, aloeswood survives mainly in incense catalogues, religious contexts and translations of Japanese incense terms.

If you want the full naming map across markets — oud, gaharu, jinkō, chén xiāng and kynam — our agarwood and oud naming guide covers every regional term. This post stays with the aloeswood name and the buyers who still use it.

Rikkoku and the Ranjatai: Aloeswood in Japan

Japan has its own vocabulary for aloeswood. In kōdō, pieces are sorted into six types, the rikkoku: kyara, rakoku, manaka, manaban, sasora and sumotara. Each is described through five tastes: sweet, sour, hot, salty and bitter.

The most famous piece is the Ranjatai, a large log kept in the Shōsōin treasure house of Tōdai-ji in Nara since the eighth century. Several rulers, Oda Nobunaga among them, are recorded as cutting slivers from it. Our kōdō guide explains how such pieces are judged.

Aloeswood is fragrant because of resin, not because of the wood itself. Healthy Aquilaria wood is pale and nearly odourless; the scent appears only where the tree has reacted to a wound and infection by filling the tissue with aromatic resin.^[2]

In the wild, that wound comes from lightning, broken branches or insects, and resin forms by chance. On plantations, growers wound trees deliberately so that resin forms in a planned way. At our plantation we use artificial inoculation on our own 100+ mu of Aquilaria sinensis.

The resin is chemically complex. Published reviews list sesquiterpenes and 2-(2-phenylethyl)chromones as the main aromatic groups, along with many minor volatile compounds.^[3] That mix is why aloeswood smells richer than a single aroma chemical can imitate.

We cover the formation process in more depth elsewhere, so here the key point is simple. Every genuine aloeswood product, from a temple stick to a collector chip, starts as resinated wood cut from a tree that was wounded years earlier.

How Aloeswood Smells When Heated

Cold aloeswood smells faint, slightly sweet and woody. Gentle heat changes everything: on a mica plate or an electric burner, good pieces release a warm, layered scent that can move from sweet to balsamic to faintly smoky.

In Japan, the incense art of kōdō treats this heated scent as something to "listen to", and it classifies agarwood by origin and character.^[4] Many Western aloeswood incense lines borrow from that tradition, which is why Japanese-style sticks dominate the aloeswood shelf.

In practice, lower grades give a lighter, drier note, while higher grades smell deeper and last longer. Distillation and burning also change the impression, so we recommend a paid sample of the exact grade before a bulk order.

What Does an Aloeswood Tree Look Like?

An aloeswood tree is simply an Aquilaria tree. On our plantation in Dian Bai it is a slim evergreen with smooth grey bark and glossy, pointed leaves. Nothing on the outside tells you whether the trunk holds resin. We only know after we wound the tree, wait, and cut test windows into the wood.

The same tree also gives aloeswood oil. We distil it in-house, and our hydro-distilled oil starts from $7.00/g with a 10 g MOQ.

The last row deserves attention. A label that says "aloeswood fragrance" or "aloeswood scented" may describe an aroma accord rather than wood. Such products can be perfectly honest, but they are not agarwood, and they should not claim agarwood content.

By contrast, Japanese-style sticks sold as aloeswood usually contain real agarwood powder, although the share varies widely from line to line. If you are building such a range, our guide to agarwood incense sticks and kyara incense explains formulations and cores.

For loose material, the simplest starting point is our graded oud wood chips, which incense retailers may sell as aloeswood chips. Makers of pressed incense, meanwhile, usually begin with Japanese-style agarwood koh incense or with milled agarwood powder for incense blending.

Aloeswood is graded exactly like any other agarwood, because it is the same material. Our founder, Wang Jianyu, grades by visual inspection, aroma, resin content and a sink test, and each wholesale lot carries a grading note.^[5]

Retail catalogues rarely print grades. Instead, they use words such as "fine", "superior" or "kyara-grade" that have no shared definition. Therefore, when you buy wholesale, ask for the supplier's own grade code and a matching sample, not just a descriptive adjective.

The right grade depends on the product. Incense sticks and cones rarely justify A or AAA wood, since the powder is blended. Loose chips for heating, however, are where higher grades earn their price, because the customer smells the wood directly.

The name on your label does not change the legal status of the material. All Aquilaria species have been listed in CITES Appendix II since 2004, so international trade in aloeswood follows the same rules as trade in agarwood or oud.^[6]

• Use the species name: customs officers may not recognise "aloeswood". Name Aquilaria sinensis and "plantation agarwood" on invoices, packing lists and permits.
• Export permits: we ship every wholesale order with a CITES Appendix II export permit wherever one is required, plus a grading note or certificate.
• Annotation #14: some finished, retail-packaged products are exempt under the listing annotation. Check the current annotation text before you plan a shipment, because annotations can change.
• Do not mix names: if your retail box says aloeswood and your invoice says oud, add the botanical name to both so the documents clearly match.
• Your import rules: the EU, the UK and the US add their own import procedures. Confirm requirements with your national CITES authority before the goods leave China.