How Resin Actually Forms Inside the Heartwood
Aloeswood is not a substance a tree produces. It's a response — and the distinction matters.
A healthy Aquilaria tree contains no aloeswood at all. The resin only begins to form after the heartwood is wounded — by insect boring, fungal infection, lightning strike, or, increasingly, a deliberate inoculation — and the tree's own defensive chemistry starts laying down sesquiterpenes and chromones around the injury site.
This is why aloeswood grading has so little to do with the size of the tree and almost everything to do with the character of the wound, the length of time it had to develop, and the specific microbial community involved. Two trees of the same species, the same age, growing a hundred meters apart, can produce resin of dramatically different quality.
Kyara-grade material represents the extreme end of this process: decades of slow, undisturbed formation, usually inside a tree that has partially fallen or been buried, aging in conditions no cultivator can fully replicate on demand. It's this — not marketing — that explains the price gap between plantation-grade and wild-harvested Kyara.
