36 agar trees for 13 lakh taka, and one of them alone for 6 lakh

Agar trees produce a dark resin where insects and fungus attack the wood, and that resin is distilled into the perfume oil Middle Eastern buyers pay heavily for. Natural formation takes 15 to 20 years, so growers hammer nails into the trunks to force the fungal wounds around which the resin gathers. This retired schoolteacher at Ugalchhari village in Baghaichhari, Rangamati, sold 36 of his agar trees for 13 lakh taka: the biggest single tree went for 6 lakh and the rest at 25,000 to 30,000 each. Another grower in Dhebachhari sold three trees for 2,95,000. Two distilling kilns set up in the upazila in 2012 sell at least 2 crore taka of attar a year and could handle more than 3 crore, but run only 8 or 9 months for want of raw material, since the existing plantations need another five or six years to mature. Baghaichhari holds at least 15 lakh privately owned agar trees, and in 2017 a local temple plantation sold 300 of them at 19,000 taka each. Traders say sales are individual and unrecorded, so nobody can give an accurate figure for the trade.