Tan Xiang

Santalum album, the Indian or true sandalwood, is a small evergreen hemiparasitic tree in the family Santalaceae, native to the dry deciduous forests of peninsular India, Sri Lanka, and parts of Indonesia, and cultivated in southern China, Australia, and other tropical regions. Trees reach 8–15 m with smooth grey-brown to reddish bark, slender pendulous branches, and opposite ovate-elliptic leaves 4–8 cm long with a leathery glaucous undersurface. The plant attaches by haustoria to the roots of various host plants for water and minerals. Small purplish-brown flowers in axillary and terminal panicles give rise to globose drupes about 1 cm across. The medicinal substance, Tan Xiang, is the fragrant yellow to yellow-brown heartwood of mature trunks and large roots, harvested by uprooting the tree, stripping the pale unscented sapwood, and cutting the densely santalol-rich heartwood into chips or grinding to powder. In traditional Chinese medicine sandalwood is acrid, aromatic, and warm, moving Qi to relieve chest, epigastric, and abdominal pain from cold stagnation.