The tree that gives
this its name
Long before it had a botanical name, Ayurveda called it Asana, Bijaka, Priyaka — the beloved. Pterocarpus marsupium: the Indian Kino, the Vijaysar.
Its heartwood forms slowly, deep in the trunk, over decades — dense, dark, and slow to give up what it holds. The classical texts name it a rasayana, a restorer of vitality. Across the dry forests of the Deccan, healers shaped that heartwood into cups. Water was left to rest in them overnight and drunk at first light. The practice passed down, unbroken, across generations.
But the tree is disappearing
Prized for its timber and its heartwood, wild Pterocarpus marsupium is now classed as Near Threatened. Its stands have thinned across India, and its seeds germinate poorly, so the forest does not easily replace what is taken from it.
Which means most “Vijaysar” sold today is one of two things: ordinary wood stained to look the part, or the heartwood of a wild tree that should still be standing.
So we grew our own
On a plantation outside Visakhapatnam, in coastal Andhra Pradesh, we tend roughly 12,000 Vijaysar trees. The oldest are more than sixty years old — old enough that their heartwood is fully formed, dense and dark. Behind them, thousands more are still growing.
We harvest slowly and selectively, and we replant more than we take. It means we can promise something almost no one in this category can: your glass did not cost a wild tree its life.
Grown, not taken.