Aloeswood.org is a platform for traders and collectors of agarwood, especially kinam, to promote and trade their agarwood products online.

What is Agarwood

Agarwood is a resinous substance formed inside agarwood trees as a result of mold infection. Before infection, the timber of the agarwood trees does not bear any scent. When the tree is wounded and infected by a type of mold, the tree produces resin as a defense to suppress the fungal growth. The resulting resin is dark, dense and aromatic. The resinous wood is commonly known as aloes, aloeswood or agarwood. It is known by various names in different cultures: it is known as "chenxiang", "chenshuixiang" and "shuichenxiang" in Chinese; "aguru" in Sanskrit; "oud" in Arabic; and "gaharu" in Indonesian.

In natural environment, only a small percentage of agarwood trees produces agarwood. Moreover, it takes along time, typically tens to hundreds of years, for agarwood to be formed. Hence, agarwood is rare and precious.

Kinam

Kinam is the best of all agarwood species and is known by numerous names – “Qinan”, “Kynam” and “Kannam”, while the Japanese refer to it as “Kyara”. The ancients used the saying, “Good agarwood is particularly hard to obtain” to describe Kinam owing to its rarity, which makes it all the more precious. Until today, a scientific account of the real factors for Kinam formation is not yet available.