It includes 21 species native to southeast Asia.

They occur particularly in the rainforests of Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, southern China, Malaysia, Northeast India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Borneo and New Guinea.

The flowers are yellowish-green, produced in an umbel; the fruit is a woody capsule 2.5–3 cm (0.98–1.2 in) long.

The genus is best known, together with Gyrinops, as the principal producer of the resin-suffused agarwood used in aromatic incense production, especially Aquilaria malaccensis.

[2][3][4] Projects are currently underway in some countries in southeast Asia to infect cultivated Aquilaria trees artificially to produce agarwood in a sustainable manner.