Durian Wood
We don’t have many Durian Wood products — we do find the wood used a little however in some of our Storyboards, The Bali Rococo Line and the pole for Balinese Umbrellas.
Strictly speaking, Durian is a plant (bears fruit) rather than a tree. The fruit is very popular here in Bali and when it’s in season, it’s sometimes hard to escape the sickly sweet smell. And, when I say it’s sickly sweet, I’m not kidding — that’s how it smells.
The Durian over here is probably Durian zibethinus but as there are a few species across the archipelago, feel free to correct me if you have a better candidate for the type used in handicrafts.
If you’re interested in learning more, please visit the Durian Palace:
Excellent site, written by a real fan of the Durian.
Botanically speaking, durian is a member of the plant family Bombacaceae, which also includes the baobab (Adansonia digitata) of tropical Africa, malabar chestnut (Pachira aquatica), bombax (Bombax ellipticum), silk floss tree (Chorisia speciosa), and the balsa or corkwood tree (Ochroma pyramidale). Duri is a Malaysian word meaning “spike.” In the genus Durio are at least 27 or 28 species, 19 of which are native to the island of Borneo (thought to be Durio’s original center of diversity), 11 to peninsular Malaysia, and 7 to Sumatra. Of 27 species, at least seven are notable for producing edible fruit, one of which (Durio zibethinus) is cultivated commercially in huge quantities in southeast Asia. Zibethinus is derived from the Italian word zibetto, which means “civet cat,” an old name for “skunk”—very unflattering for the durian, and some durian antagonists would say, for the civet cat!
The durian is a very ancient and primitive fruit. Some botanists regard the wild ancestors of modern durians as one of the first plants to rely on animals for dispersal of its seeds, enticing them to do so with attractive, nutritious, delicious, and odiferous food surrounding the seeds within a large fruit capsule. A British botanist named E.J.H. Corner originated this “durian theory of plant evolution.” In scientific papers published starting in 1949, he argued that the enticement of animals to transport seeds in their bellies arose before all other methods of plant seed dispersal, and that primitive ancestors of D. zibethinus were the not only the earliest practitioners of that strategy but the earliest plants to evolve into woody trees. (Read David Quammen’s entertaining and informative article about E.J.H. Corner’s durian theory of plant evolution here.)