Aquilaria is a genus of trees, called lign aloes or lign-aloes trees, in the family Thymelaeaceae. It includes 21 species native to southeast Asia. They occur particularly in the rainforests of Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, southern China, Malaysia, Northeast India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Borneo and New Guinea. The trees grow to tall. The leaves are alternate, long and broad, with a short acuminate apex and an entire margin. The flowers are yellowish-green, produced in an umbel; the fruit is a woody capsule long.
The genus is best known, together with Gyrinops, as the principal producer of the resin-suffused agarwood used in aromatic incense production, especially Aquilaria malaccensis.Ng, L.T., Chang Y.S. and Kadir, A.A. (1997) "A review on agar (gaharu) producing Aquilaria species" Journal of Tropical Forest Products 2(2): pp. 272-285Barden, Angela (2000) Heart of the Matter: Agarwood Use and Trade and CITES Implementation for Aquilaria malaccensis TRAFFIC International, Cambridge, The depletion of wild trees from indiscriminate cutting for agarwood has resulted in the trees being listed and protected as an endangered species.Broad, S. (1995) "Agarwood harvesting in Vietnam" TRAFFIC Bulletin 15:96 Projects are currently underway in some countries in southeast Asia to infect cultivated Aquilaria trees artificially to produce agarwood in a sustainable manner. In Indonesia, for example, there have been proposals to encourage the planting of gahara, as it is known locally, in eastern Indonesia, particularly in the province of Papua.Theresia Sufa, 'Gaharu: Indonesia's endangered fragrant wood', The Jakarta Post, 2 February 2010.
Species
There are 21 species assigned to this genus:
Aquilaria apiculata Aquilaria baillonii Aquilaria banaensae Aquilaria beccariana Aquilaria brachyantha Aquilaria citrinicarpa Aquilaria crassna Aquilaria cumingiana Aquilaria filaria Aquilaria grandiflora Aquilaria hirta Aquilaria khasiana Aquilaria malaccensis, Aquilaria microcarpa Aquilaria parvifolia Aquilaria rostrata Aquilaria rugosa Aquilaria sinensis Aquilaria subintegra Aquilaria urdanetensis – Philippines Aquilaria yunnanensis
References