Myrrh is made from the dried sap, called an oleo-gum-resin, of small thorny Commiphora trees, mainly Commiphora myrrha, which grow wild in Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen and Oman. By weight it's roughly 30 to 60% water-soluble gum, 25 to 40% resin and 3 to 8% essential oil.
If you want the bigger picture first, I already wrote about what is myrrh and why people care about it. This page is the nuts and bolts. Where it comes from, what's actually inside it, and how a scratch on a thorny tree ends up as the incense sitting on your shelf.
Myrrh isn't a flower, a seed, a bark or a wood. It's sap. When a Commiphora tree gets wounded, it bleeds a sticky liquid to seal the cut, kind of like a scab. That liquid dries into hard lumps, and those lumps are myrrh.
The technical name is oleo-gum-resin. Sounds fancy, but it just means three things mixed together: an oil (oleo), a gum that dissolves in water, and a resin that dissolves in alcohol. That combo explains almost everything about how myrrh behaves, which we'll get to in a minute.
The main source is Commiphora myrrha. You'll also see it listed as Commiphora molmol, which is a synonym (Kew's Plants of the World Online treats them as the same species). There are a couple hundred Commiphora species out there, and a handful of them give resins that get traded as myrrh or something close to it.
Commiphora belongs to the Burseraceae family. So does Boswellia, the genus frankincense comes from. Customers ask me all the time if myrrh and frankincense come from the same tree. They don't. They're cousins, not siblings. Same family, different genus, different trees.
Honestly, it's not a pretty tree. It's more of a big scraggly shrub, usually around 3 to 5 meters tall. The branches are knotted and thorny. The bark is pale and peels off in thin papery flakes. Leaves are small, sparse and come in little groups of three (trifoliate), and for a good chunk of the dry season the tree may barely have any.
It looks like something that's been surviving out in the heat for a long time. Because it has.
Myrrh trees grow in the Horn of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula. Think hot, dry, rocky ground with thin soil and not much rain. The main producers are Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya on the African side, with Yemen and Oman across the water. These same regions fed the old Incense Route, the caravan trade that hauled resins north to Egypt, the Mediterranean and beyond.
Here's where it gets interesting. Most of what I'm pulling from here comes from Hanuš and colleagues' review of myrrh chemistry in Biomedical Papers (2005) and the European Medicines Agency's assessment of Commiphora molmol gum-resin.
The gum is the biggest piece. It's mostly polysaccharides (long sugar chains) with some proteins. Because it dissolves in water, myrrh will partly break down when wet and turn into a milky, cloudy liquid. That's an emulsion, and it's actually a handy authenticity test.
The resin won't dissolve in water. It's made up of compounds like triterpenes and commiphoric acids. This is why traditional myrrh tinctures use alcohol. Water alone just won't pull it all out.
The oil is the smallest part by weight, but it's what your nose cares about. It's loaded with furanosesquiterpenes, a group that includes furanoeudesma-1,3-diene, curzerene and lindestrene. Those are the molecules behind the bitter, earthy, balsamic character. If you want the full breakdown, I wrote about what myrrh smells like separately.
| Component | Approx. % | Dissolves in | What it contributes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gum | 30 to 60% | Water | Bulk of the tear, milky emulsion when wet |
| Resin | 25 to 40% | Alcohol | Hardness, body, slow smoky burn |
| Essential oil | 3 to 8% | Neither (it's volatile, steam distills off) | Aroma, the bitter balsamic scent |
The ranges are wide because every batch is a little different. Species, region, season and age all shift the numbers.
So how is myrrh made? Nobody really "makes" it. The tree does the work. People just help it along. The FAO's Flavours and Fragrances of Plant Origin (Coppen, 1995) lays out the traditional process pretty clearly, and it hasn't changed much in a very long time.
Harvesters cut shallow wounds into the bark, usually during the dry season. Not deep. Just enough to reach the resin ducts under the surface.
A pale yellow, oily sap seeps out of the cut. It's sticky and soft at first, almost like thick honey.
The sap sits on the tree and air-dries for roughly two weeks. As it dries it darkens and hardens into irregular lumps called tears. They're called that because, well, they look like the tree is crying. Pretty fitting for something with a name that means bitter.
Harvesters scrape the tears off and sort them. Grading comes down to size, color, clarity and how much bark or dirt is stuck on. Big, clean, evenly colored tears get the top grade. Smaller bits and dusty pieces get ground or sold cheaper.
Once you've got the tears, the classic way to enjoy them is burning resin on charcoal. A small piece goes on a lit disc, softens, bubbles and releases that dark smoke.
Not all myrrh comes from cuts. Some trees ooze sap through natural cracks in the bark, and that gets gathered too. The concern is over-tapping. Cut a tree too often or too deep, and it gets stressed, weaker and less able to recover. Researchers and harvesting communities have raised this for both myrrh and frankincense. It's a good reason to care where your resin comes from.
Fresh sap is pale yellow. As the tears age they go reddish-brown, and old tears can get dark enough to look almost black. The surface is usually dusty and opaque, kind of chalky looking, but if you break a tear open the inside often has a glassy, deep reddish shine.
Lumps are irregular. Some are pea sized, some are as big as a walnut. No two look the same.
This is where a lot of people get mixed up. I think most folks expect myrrh to be sweet like frankincense, and they're surprised when it's bitter. Then there's opoponax, often sold as "sweet myrrh," which just adds to the confusion.
| Myrrh | Sweet Myrrh (Opoponax) | Frankincense | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source tree | Commiphora myrrha | Commiphora guidottii, Commiphora erythraea | Boswellia species (e.g. Boswellia sacra) |
| Color | Reddish-brown, dusty | Golden to dark brown | Pale yellow to milky white |
| Scent | Bitter, earthy, balsamic | Sweeter, softer, warm balsamic | Bright, citrusy, piney |
| Common uses | Incense, tinctures, oils | Perfumery, incense | Incense, worship, oils |
Same family, three different personalities. If you like the bright side, try Frankincense Incense Full Box from Satya next to a myrrh stick and you'll smell the difference right away.
The simplest form. Tears get burned on charcoal discs exactly as they come off the tree, maybe broken into smaller bits first.
Steam distillation pulls the volatile oil out of the resin. It's a small yield since oil is only a few percent of the tear.
Perfumers use solvent extraction to get a thicker, richer extract. These carry more of the heavy base notes than a steam-distilled oil does.
Resin soaked in alcohol. This goes back to the chemistry: alcohol dissolves the resin portion water can't touch.
This is the part closest to my heart. Lower grade tears and pieces get ground into powder. That powder is mixed with a binder (makko, which comes from tree bark, is a common one) plus charcoal or wood powder so it holds a shape and keeps burning. Pressed into a cone, rolled onto a stick or shaped into myrrh backflow cones with that little hollow channel for the smoke to fall through. If you're curious about the whole process, here's how incense is made from start to finish.
Full honesty: we sell Satya and Wild Berry myrrh sticks, not raw resin. The Myrrh Incense Full Box from Satya is an easy way to get that bitter, grounding myrrh character without messing with coals. There's more on how to use myrrh in all its forms if you want to compare.
A few simple checks if you've got raw resin:
When you're ready to light it up, here's how to burn incense properly so you get a clean, even burn.
The ancient Egyptians used myrrh in embalming and in kyphi, a temple incense blend. Caravans carried it up the Incense Route for centuries, and it was worth a small fortune. It shows up in the Bible too, most famously as one of the gifts the Magi brought. Traditional Chinese medicine knew it as mo yao, and it appears in historical Ayurvedic texts as well. That's history, not health advice.
Encyclopaedia Britannica traces the name back to the Arabic and Aramaic murr, meaning bitter. Pretty fitting. If myrrh's bitterness isn't your thing, there are plenty of other resin-based incense scents worth trying.
Is myrrh a plant, a spice, or a resin? It's a resin that comes from a plant. It's been used in tiny amounts as a flavoring, but it's not a kitchen spice in the usual sense.
How is myrrh made? Harvesters cut the bark of a Commiphora tree, the sap seeps out, and it hardens into tears over about two weeks. Then the tears are collected and graded.
Where does myrrh come from? Commiphora trees in the Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya) and southern Arabia (Yemen, Oman).
What color is myrrh? Pale yellow when fresh, reddish-brown as it ages, and sometimes close to black when it's old.
Is myrrh the same as frankincense? No. They come from different genera, Commiphora and Boswellia, in the same Burseraceae family.
Does myrrh dissolve in water? Partly. The gum dissolves and turns the water milky, but the resin needs alcohol.
What does myrrh smell like when burned? Bitter, earthy, warm and balsamic. Darker and less sweet than most people expect.
Can you grow a myrrh tree at home? Only if you live somewhere very hot and dry. Otherwise you'd need a container in a warm greenhouse, and even then it's slow going.
Is myrrh incense made from real myrrh? Not always. Check the ingredient list for resin or powder. And once you know where it comes from, the next question is usually what myrrh is used for.
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