How to Tell Oil-Rich Palo Santo from Distilled Wood

Updated

Much of the palo santo on the market today is wood left over after its oil has been distilled out for perfume and essential oil. In a product photo the two can look alike. In your hand, they are easy to tell apart. If you are sourcing palo santo for your shop or brand, here are five simple checks.

1. Color

Distilled wood is pale: beige to greyish, often with a dry, washed-out surface. Resin-rich palo santo is golden to amber, with darker streaks where the resin has gathered in the grain.

A pale distilled palo santo stick above a golden, resin-rich raw palo santo stick on grey concrete

One thing color does not tell you: the cut. The distilled sticks shown here are split by axe and ours are cut square, but either kind of wood can be cut either way. Judge the wood, not the shape.

2. Weight

Oil is heavy. Once it has been extracted, the wood that remains is noticeably lighter for its size. On a kitchen scale, a single axe-split stick from a retail brand weighs about 3 to 5 g. One of our resin-rich sticks weighs 8 to 10 g. Part of that gap comes from the shape, since a square-cut stick holds more wood than a split one, but even a few sticks in the palm feel noticeably different.

A pale distilled palo santo stick held upright beside a golden, resin-rich palo santo stick

3. End grain

Look at the end of a stick. Distilled wood is dry and fibrous at the end and tends to crumble or splinter. Resin-rich wood is dense and smooth, and the resin often shows as a faint sheen or darker patches across the cut.

The crumbly end of a distilled palo santo stick next to the dense, resin-rich end of a raw palo santo stick

4. Scent

Scratch the surface lightly with a fingernail and smell it. Resin-rich palo santo gives off its warm, citrus-bright scent straight away, before it is ever lit. Distilled wood smells faint, and much of what scent there is comes only from burning.

Three distilled palo santo sticks beside three resin-rich palo santo sticks, viewed from above on grey concrete

5. Sound

Take two sticks and knock them against each other. Distilled wood sounds empty, with a slight echo to the knock. Resin-rich wood sounds fuller and denser.

End view of three distilled palo santo sticks with dry, fibrous ends beside three resin-rich palo santo sticks with dense, golden ends

Why it matters for trade buyers

Your customers will notice the difference long before they can name it. Faint wood means more returns and fewer reorders. Resin-rich wood is what people come back for.

Our raw Palo Santo Wood

Our palo santo is naturally fallen wood, gathered in Peru between 1990 and 2005 and aging in Taiwan ever since. Our raw Palo Santo Wood, sticks and chips, is resin-rich and has never been distilled. It is available from 5 kg.

Want to compare it for yourself? Request a quote or samples and tell us what you have in mind.

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