GABU AND CHAXDAN, 73 



Garu and Chandan. 



• By H. N. Ridley. 



Incense woods have always been highly prized by Orientals 

 from the earliest years, and a g-ood deal has been written about 

 them in various works, so that it is rather surprising to find 

 how very incompletely the trees producing them are known. 

 The two most important and interesting ones in the ~ Malay 

 Peninsula are the Garu or Calambac and the Chandan. Both 

 of these belong to the genus Aquilaria. of the order Thymelea- 

 rece and as neither have been adequately described, I will give 

 descriptions of the trees in dealing with each wood. 



GrABU OB GrAHABU, KALAMBAK, TULKABAS. 



Aquilaria Malaccensis Lam. Diet. i.49. 111. t. 356. Dec. Prodr. 

 ii. 59. Kurz. For. Flor. ii. 336. Hook, til Flor. British India v. p. 

 200. A ovata Cav. Diss. vii. 377. t. 224:. A secundaria Dec. lc. 

 Rumph. Herb. Amboin. ii 34 t. 10. A tree 70 to 80 feet tall with 

 whitish rather smooth bark. Leaves elliptic acuminate glabrous 

 when adult, sub-coriaceous thin 3 inches long 1^ wide, light green 

 shining, nerves about 13 pairs not much raised beneath and quite 

 invisible on the upper surface, young leaves and shoots silky. 

 Flowers in short axillary silky panicles of umbels an inch long 

 with two or three umbels of about 10 flowers on each, on slender 

 pedicels ^ inch long, lobes 5 hairy oblong obtuse recurved, as 

 long as the tube, alternate lobes smaller than the others. In the 

 mouth of the tube and projecting conspicuously beyond it are ten 

 oblong silky scales. Stamens 10, projecting beyond the tube, fila- 

 ments free from the tube for some way, anthers obovate. Pis- 

 til cylindric hairy much shorter than the tube, tipped with a 

 thick conic stigma. Fruit a flattened obovate woody capsule, 

 green and fleshy when fresh, woody when dry, 1 inch long and 

 J inch wide, walls very thick, \ inch through, splitting' into 

 two valves with a partition down each, and containing one seed 

 in each cell, Seed ovoid globose orange covered with red hair. 



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