What does palo santo smell like?
Reviewed by Lucy Grant, co-owner and fragrance reviewer — 24 September 2026
Burned, palo santo smells sweet, spicy and balsamic, with a bright, citrus-like lift. The chemistry backs that lift: limonene is the largest single component of its oil in all three analyses we read that give percentages, from about a quarter to nearly half of it.
It is a wood, not a resin like myrrh, and it is rare on perfume note lists: 2 of the 1,038 published pyramids in Sentia’s catalogue name it.
The tree
A holy wood from the dry forests
Palo santo is Spanish for holy wood. The tree is Bursera graveolens, a deciduous tree of the tropical dry forests that run from southern Mexico, through Central America and Colombia, to Ecuador and north-western Peru. A 2021 paper puts it simply: its woody material “has a characteristic spicy, sweet, and balsamic odour and is used as a type of incense”. In Ecuador and Peru it is also a household medicine, used against flu, asthma, stomach ache and rheumatism, among other things.
It belongs to the Burseraceae, the same family as Commiphora, the shrub that gives myrrh. That family is the resin family, which is why palo santo, myrrh and frankincense so often end up in the same sentence and the same incense burner.
A 2012 paper calls it “a wild tree of commercial importance”; a 2025 one notes it is readily accessible and produces high yields of fruit. Both the wood and that fruit are distilled for oil. A 2016 study of the Ecuadorian oil trade reports that up to 3% of the weight of fresh fruit ends up as oil, and that the other 97% is waste the country has looked for ways to reuse.
Farina et al., Insects (2021) in full, via PubMed Central, on 24 September 2026; IUCN Red List (2019) for the family and range; Monzote et al., Natural Product Communications (2012), Viteri et al., Journal of Xenobiotics (2025) and Carrión-Paladines et al., Waste Management (2016) from their abstracts.
The oil
Mostly limonene, and it shows
Three analyses that give percentages disagree on the number and agree on the headline. Limonene leads every time:
| Study | What was distilled | Limonene |
|---|---|---|
| Monzote et al., Natural Product Communications (2012) | not stated in the abstract | 26.5% |
| Farina et al., Insects (2021) | air-dried stems, Ecuador | 46.2% |
| Figueiredo et al., Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (2026) | not stated in the abstract | 38.7% |
The industry database that fragrance buyers use describes the wood oil, at full strength, as “balsamic citrus fruity woody coumarinic” and files it, a little surprisingly, under the floral odour type. Coumarinic is the word perfumers use for the sweet, hay-like smell of coumarin; here it is a description, not a claim that the oil contains it.
The Good Scents Company, industry database, bursera graveolens wood oil entry; Viteri et al., Journal of Xenobiotics (2025).
The oil is not the smoke
If you have loved the smell of a burning stick and been let down by a bottle of the oil, there is a reason. In 2021 a trained panel of eight assessors smelled an oil distilled from Ecuadorian stems and found its character “negatively affected by a strong odour of ‘mouldy lemon’”; it scored lowest of the three oils they tested for pleasantness. A 2025 study of another Ecuadorian oil reports the same thing in fewer words: “lower sensory appeal due to off-flavors”.
The smoke comes from burning wood. The oil is steam pulled through stems, wood or fruit. Same tree, two different smells, and a note list that says palo santo names a smell, the way every note does, not which of the two went into the bottle.
Farina et al., Insects (2021) and Parichanon et al., Insects (2025).
The forest-floor story
Sellers of the wood repeat a rule: a palo santo tree must die and lie on the forest floor for years, often four to ten, before its wood is worth burning. We looked for a paper that measured this and did not find one. A Peru-based reforestation group that works with the tree calls the years figure wrong, while agreeing on two points that are easier to believe: older woody tissue holds a different oil from young green wood, and naturally fallen trees are the most aromatic source. The industry database, for its part, lists the oil as distilled from the wood, and suppliers there describe that wood as aged.
So the story has something in it, and no number in it that anyone has checked. Treat “aged for exactly so many years” as marketing until someone counts.
Camino Verde, a non-profit’s blog, not a paper, and The Good Scents Company.
Is it endangered?
Least Concern globally, watched in Peru
The IUCN Red List assessed Bursera graveolens on 1 March 2019 and listed it as Least Concern, with a stable population, across its whole range. That is the global view. Peru’s is narrower: the reforestation group above reports that Peru told the 2005 Global Forest Resources Assessment the tree was critically endangered within the country, and it argues there is “no coherent rationale” for calling the species anything but endangered.
Rules on cutting live trees have changed more than once, and we could not verify the current text, so this page does not quote one. If you buy the wood, the honest questions are where it came from and whether the tree was standing when it was taken.
IUCN Red List (2019), read on 24 September 2026, and Camino Verde.
On note lists
Two pyramids in a thousand
For all the incense sold, palo santo almost never reaches a perfume’s printed notes. Just 2 of the 1,038 published pyramids we hold carry it, and each of the two houses puts it in the base:
- Carner Barcelonawrites it as “Bolivian Palo Santo”
- Vilhelm Parfumeriewrites it as “Palo Santo”
So “palo santo perfume” is mostly a description of a mood, smoky, resinous and bright, rather than a note you will often find printed. If that is the mood you want, the notes houses do print for it are the ones on the myrrh, oud and incense side of the shelf.
The stick you burn and the bottle you wear
A perfume bought for the memory of a room where palo santo was burning can still end up unworn. The way to know is not the blotter; it is whether you reach for it again after the first week.
Sentia counts it for you: one tap on each day you wear the bottle, and after a few weeks the log shows whether the memory holds up on skin.
Questions
Still wondering
- What is palo santo?
- Palo santo, Spanish for holy wood, is the wood of Bursera graveolens, a deciduous tree of the tropical dry forests that run from southern Mexico down to north-western Peru. Pieces of the wood are burned as incense, and its oil is distilled from the wood and from the fruit.
- What does palo santo smell like when it burns?
- A 2021 paper describes the wood's smell as spicy, sweet and balsamic. An industry database adds citrus to the description of its oil, and the chemistry fits: limonene is the largest single component of the oil in all three analyses we read that give percentages, from about a quarter to nearly half of it.
- Is palo santo endangered?
- Not globally. The IUCN Red List assessed Bursera graveolens in 2019 as Least Concern with a stable population. Peru has treated the tree as threatened at a national level, and a Peru-based reforestation group argues the species should be called endangered. Rules on cutting live trees have changed over the years, so check the current ones where you are.
- Why does palo santo oil smell different from the burning wood?
- Because they are different things. The smoke comes from burning aged wood. The oil is distilled from stems, wood or fruit, and a trained panel in 2021 found an Ecuadorian stem oil carried a strong mouldy-lemon off-note; a 2025 study of another Ecuadorian oil also reported off-flavours. A bottle of the oil is not a stick of the wood.
- Is palo santo related to frankincense and myrrh?
- Yes, by family. Bursera, the palo santo genus, and Commiphora, the myrrh genus, both belong to the Burseraceae, a family of resin-bearing trees and shrubs. The resemblance people hear in the names is not an accident.